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by Shawarmerei (livefromarkham)



Series: The Perfect Storm [3]
Category: British Actor RPF, Marvel Avengers Movies RPF
Genre: Assorted Other Sad Things, Depression, F/M, M/M, Tragicomedy, Various Forms of Mind Control, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-10 09:45:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 60,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livefromarkham/pseuds/Shawarmerei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know how long it's been, but he's failing as a ruler. He needs sleep, but his shortcomings keep him up at night. He doesn't know what to do.</p><p>That's just as well, because someone else has plans for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The trouble with truth is it never lies

**Author's Note:**

> This was my NaNovel. It's a doozy. Hope you have fun.
> 
> I plan to take this entire series, upend it, take it apart, and rebuild it from scratch. After I do that, I'm going to publish it as an actual book. When I get to that point, I'll be taking these down. Until then, happy reading.

The silence in the house permeates my bones, even as I stare out from the porch. There is a gentle hum about the place, one I cannot put my finger on. It soothes me. It is the only way I can get to sleep these days. Robin cannot sleep without me next to her, not without my soft song whispering in her ear, but I cannot force her to constantly rely upon me, upon my discoveries in order to remain sane. So I sing it once for her, gently enough to send her into slumber for the entirety of the night, then I rise from the bed and sit watching the night.

I never remain asleep for as long as she does, so it is no detriment to me to fall asleep after she does and to wake before sunlight cracks over the horizon. It is soothing for me to walk the grounds, to explore the treeline in our backyard and the peace throughout the empty fields. I have chosen a place in total seclusion for our everyday home, somewhere that others cannot and will not find. Robin prefers it that way, and I rather like having someplace to go where I do not feel as though others will find me and judge me or something of the like.

I have lost count of the time I have ruled this place. It is a mystery, but it does not matter to me. Perhaps five hundred years. Perhaps a thousand. When you have lived for more than eight thousand years—god, I’ve outlived Posurin in terms of age, haven’t I, suppose I’d never really thought about it—things start to blur together for you. The small people that are alive now are still significant to me, and every death that rings through this world saddens me, but I have had to detach myself from them to some extent. If I cared about each and every one of them with the same intensity that I care about, say, Robin or Loki, I would certainly collapse from grief and retreat to my home, never to be seen again.

Robin is awake. I can feel it. She shouldn’t be. _Go back to sleep,_ I tell her, my mind broadcasting my message across the estate.She doesn’t. I can hear her mental complaints about the creaky stairs, her groans and sighs as she descends. She walks down the hallway, the floorboards groaning, and the screen door opens. She is dressed in a silken nightgown, her feet bare, her eyes red-rimmed and sleepy. She blinks at me, her chestnut hair rippling in the light wind, the smell of pine needles running straight through her on the night breeze. She lets her eyes close, then opens them again, slowly.

“What are you doing up.” It’s a statement, not a question, as though she is cross with me. Of course she is cross with me. Everyone is constantly cross with me. That’s not entirely true, but sometimes it feels as though it is. It feels as though others do not enjoy my presence as they once did, as if they are growing distant. I can force them to love me, to worship the very ground I walk upon, but it feels so wrong, so dirty to do what I once did in order to make friends. I regret it, always and forever. I regret every moment of what I have done. But I was destined to take this path. I was condemned to this life, this course of action from my very genesis. Hirese predicted it millennia ago. There was nothing I could do to stop it.

I do not answer my wife.

“What are you doing up?” she repeats, though it is gentler as she sits down beside me in the slightly swaying loveseat. Her hazel eyes pierce through me, though I have always thought myself superb at veiling my emotions. I feel as though she can even see my heartbeat, if she looks closely enough.

“It’s the only way I can sleep,” I confess, shying away from her scrutiny. “I can’t put myself to sleep with my own song, after all.”

“Have you ever tried?” she asks, and I ponder this for a moment. I am not certain that is how the Lullaby works. After all, it is best sung in my native language, and it retains a certain hypnotic quality when it is in a language that the listener does not understand. There is no language I do not understand. There is no way she can possibly suggest something that would make it work for me, or so I believe.

“No,” I admit, “but I know my own language. I don’t think it would work.”

She cocks her head to the side. “Why not? I thought you invented it specifically so that it could put anyone to sleep. Even you.” 

“ _Zu Soralm jichal_ —“ I stop. I haven’t spoken _Reisuseln_ apart from the Lullaby—the _Soralm_ —in centuries. Why am I starting now? Why is it what comes naturally to me in the situation, and why is it so hard for me to remember how to translate what I’ve just said to English? “The… Lullaby… is not… something I invented. It is alive in its own way. I was the one who discovered it, hence why it is the Trickster’s Lullaby, the _Tasedian Soralm_. I do not know if it is capable of putting me to sleep simply because I am the one who found it and I do not know if it would be willing.”

“Tom,” she says, a bit sternly, using my human name as though she is viewing me as one of her own, “I’m pretty sure songs aren’t alive.”

My gaze flickers silently over the trees before me. I tilt my head back and close my eyes, listening to the sound of the wind and my own breathing and my heartbeat and all that it entails. “Everything is a song, dear,” I respond. “Everything living is a song.”

“Then why haven’t you ever mentioned this before?” she asks. She asks too many questions. I can’t fault her for that. I was curious once. I was young once. I was the naïve one that did not understand the world once upon a time. Now I am older than anyone alive could ever dream of being, and I know so much, yet I still feel so young and so stupid half of the time. I do not understand it. I will never understand it.

“I don’t know,” I respond. “I suppose it’s just a different way of perceiving the world. I’m not joking about the Lullaby being alive, though. I don’t know how or why it’s alive, but it is, and I discovered it and nurtured it and… it’s sort of like a child to me in a lot of ways. It’s mine. I just don’t think it would work on me, especially—especially since part of the allure is from it being in a different language.”

Robin smiles. “Then speak what you were speaking before. Your native language. Get yourself into the mindset, but write it down in English. Then, when you’re not thinking in English anymore, I’ll sing it to you.”

“I don’t think this is going to work,” I protest, but it is weak and sad. I look at her with pleading eyes, but she does not understand. In a way, I am afraid to give myself over to the Lullaby. I am afraid it will no longer view me as its owner, that it will be the first of many rebels in this world I created. If the Lullaby were to pursue me, to backfire upon me and to drag me down under into its depths, there would be nothing I could do about it.

I trust Robin, but I do not trust the song, so I shake my head and give her a glimpse—just a taste—of my apprehension. She bites her lip and nods, understanding. “I mean, if you didn’t focus on the words, couldn’t it work? I mean, I don’t know the words. I don’t know your language, and I always pass out before it gets all the way through. But… couldn’t you have Loki sing it? You could hear it then. It’d be pretty easy, actually.”

I loathe asking Loki for help when it involves giving myself over to him. I am always afraid that his old self will resurface, will force me to kill someone important again, will infest my mind once more like the parasite he was before I conquered him. I would prefer to keep him as part of my mind, as part of my consciousness, not a separate portion that is hellbent on taking my body and doing as it pleases with it. The Council in my mind is silent, offering no aid. “I don’t trust him that much,” I say, and then instantly regret letting the words slip from my tongue. Robin is glaring at me, furious.

“After all he does for you, you don’t trust him? You have a pretty terrible past too, you know, and I still trust you. You’ve got no reason not to trust him.”

I sigh, letting some of the details pass me by. “I… I suppose you have a point.” I don’t mention that she’s been forced to trust me, that Loki’s been forced to trust me, that I have reasons not to trust him. I remain silent after I make my statement, and make no move to summon Loki.

He comes of his own accord five minutes later, almost exactly as I had predicted he would. Robin and I have been sitting in silence, the quiet loaded like a gun that I wish I could bring to my temple. I didn’t want this. I never wanted this. My mind is screaming _mercy, mercy,_ but I know I will never receive it. I brought this upon myself. I murdered my colleagues in cold blood. There is nothing more I can do. Loki looks morose, his hair less frizzy than I am used to, as if it were tamed or depressed in much the same way that he appears. “What can I do for you, sir?” he asks, giving me a look of sad inquiry. I almost feel bad asking.

“I want you to sing me my song,” I say, and he looks confused, as though he has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Sir. I can’t do that. To listen to it in order to replicate it would make me fall asleep.”

I sigh. “I know that. I am… I am going to try to convince it that for a night, you are allowed to sing it without consequence, and I will be allowed to hear it and find peace.”

Loki’s wolfish grin makes me instantly rethink my strategy. “Oh, of course. Anything for you, sir.”

“On… on second thought,” I stutter, but Robin gives me a look. I try to plead with her with my eyes, to make her realize that he has nothing but bad intentions for me and everyone else right now, but she ignores it or doesn’t see it. I hang my head in defeat, giving a sigh. “Never mind. I’ll teach you the song.” I take him aside and take a deep breath so I can sing, filling my mind with the intent of allowing Loki to be its bearer for the night—and only the night. “ _Kalsol, erzes_ …”

I am only one line into the song when I collapse, my mind emptying without half a thought as I plummet into the blackness.

 

In the blackness, there are dreams.

I find myself lying on the couch, calmly stroking Robin’s hair. I can feel a smile on my face as I look down at her. She is so perfect to me that I could not imagine being with anyone else. She brings light to my darkness, restraint to my chaos. I am so grateful that she is here, that she has stayed.

I recall, briefly, that it was not entirely her choice, but that thought is fleeting. She is happy here, and I am happy too. This is preferable to whatever future we might have had separately. I’m sure she would agree if I asked her.

Smiling at her, I look down at her. She still has not opened her eyes. I look over her body, trying to discern why. Her hair is a bit matted, sticky. A deep sorrow pierces my chest as I recognize the situation, but I push it away so quickly that I do not remember my dream when I open my eyes.

By the time I wake, I do not recall the event I was remembering in my dream at all.

 

When I try to lift my head, it is heavy, as though my skull has been filled with cement. I open my eyes to find myself in the company of my wife and Loki, still outside on the porch in the breaking light. They both look horribly concerned, a look that Robin wears well and I have never seen grace Loki’s countenance before. It is strange. I do not think that I like it. “What time is it?” I ask, voice cracking and small. It must be dawn, or nearly dawn. I feel awful for not getting Robin back to sleep before I fell apart.

“Seven,” they reply in unison, then Robin takes the lead. “You just… fell over like a sack of bricks. It was so surreal. You didn’t even get that far into the song.”

Loki nods. “Indeed. I felt myself growing drowsy, so I thought it was not progressing as you had intended, but you fell much faster than I did.”

I try to sit up and fail miserably even given all of my strength borrowed from Roanah. My muscles feel leaden, my body weighed down beyond compare even as my mind continues to buzz with activity. “I don’t think I care to contemplate why this is happening,” I say, my voice still feeble in my throat. “There are implications I’d rather not ruminate upon at the current time. What am I supposed to do today? I need to get my mind onto… other things.”

Loki picks up a clipboard off of the railing. I am surprised it did not topple to the ground in the time that they must have been worried about me. There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach as I realize how selfish this entire escapade was. I should have just gone back to bed with Robin and stayed up the entire night instead of making them worry. Loki, noticing my countenance no doubt change to one of thought and concern, clears his throat to distract me from my thoughts. I give him a smile of gratitude, but he is already flipping through the pages, looking at the list. “Well… it would appear that you don’t have much to do today. I’ve taken an inventory of the housework that needs to be done, but as I have other responsibilities today, I regret to inform you I can’t be your personal servant today.” There is a flicker of a smirk that flies across his face, a remnant of who he used to be. I let him keep it. He is still completely obedient to me, after all, so it doesn’t matter whether or not he gets a bit snappy with me sometimes. And if it did matter, I could change it in an instant, besides. 

“I might accompany you to work tomorrow,” I inform him, “but not today. If my schedule allows, I mean.”

“Tomorrow is even more free than today,” he replies. “You’ve let the housework stack up for quite a while, and Robin has been diligently trying to help, but she has responsibilities of her own, as well. In just the past week, three different schools have requested to have her in to talk about you.”

“Why not me? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. I just think I would be… a little more appropriate to talk about me. Is that reasonable?”  I bite my lip. I do enjoy that people want Robin to be out and talk to them, especially considering her position, but it perplexes me that three separate groups of people have decided she is more apt to talk about me than I am. I’ve never been asked to a school to talk about myself, and apparently this has been happening for a while. I suppose I wouldn’t know. I do spend a lot of time brooding. I make a mental note to get out and do more instead of spending most of my days sulking.

Robin cocks her head to the side and looks at me. “Well, yes, but you’re a bit scary sometimes, and you also paint yourself in a very unfair light. You’re very biased about yourself, and we thought it would be better if someone with a slightly less unbiased opinion—someone that wasn’t literally inside of your head at every waking moment—would talk about you instead. I mean, I do know what goes on in there to some extent, but you just get so self-depreciating that if we’re going to teach children who you are, they just can’t start off with an opinion like that. It’d give their parents a very tough time.”

“I suppose,” I say, sighing. “Maybe it’d be better if this new generation hated me. This world isn’t…” I trail off, imagining all the things I had intended for my world, all the things it wasn’t. It was calm, yes, and it was very good in a great deal of respects, but it was not what I had wanted. Well, maybe it was what I had wanted before, but it wasn’t what I wanted now. I want to live a normal life. Well, alright, that’s not quite true. I do enjoy being a ruler. I think I do an awful job of it, and that no one should feel good about me ruling them, but I like the opportunity to meet so many people that admire me. It reminds me a great deal of the days just before I ascended to where I am now, of who I was then. I was… more ambitious then. Now I am just tired… tired and constantly sad. 

“Don’t say that,” Robin says, giving me a tired expression herself. “You’re doing fine. It’s statements like that one that made Loki and I decide that you shouldn’t be the one giving the speeches in the first place.” I find myself equal parts enraged and ecstatic that they’re making plans behind my back, going against what I’ve asked. On one hand, they shouldn’t be able to do that. I am their ruler and they should bend to my will whenever I impose it. On the other… I’m glad they’re starting to shake free of the obsessive control I placed upon them to restrict their actions, and I am starting to hope that soon, they will start giving me the truth of the world rather than the truth that they believe. They never lie to me, but that in itself is saying something—that they truly believe I am a good ruler, that they believe in me, and I hate it. I suppose what I wish most for is that someone would oppose me, hence my statement about the new generation. That I did not suppress all free will in my people. That they were given the option to rebel. But I cannot do that, or else they will simply descend into the anarchy from whence they emerged. This is a constant dilemma for me—trust the people with their own will and watch them firebomb each other into oblivion, or keep the peace that makes me bored to tears and makes me believe I’m not fit to rule?

I sigh again, nodding. “That’s fair, I suppose. That is what you’re here for, after all. Making the judgments that I can’t.” Yet I never ask them the most important question of all, because I already know what their answer will be—the answer that I gave to them, that I forced them to have at the core of their being at all times. “So it’ll just be me doing housework then, today.”

“It would appear so,” Loki says, nodding. “Apologies, but I absolutely must be off.” I give him a nod, and he vanishes. Robin gives me a nod as well, denoting that given timezones, she really should be going as well. Or maybe she’s thinking it. I can hardly even tell anymore. I embrace her, and she stands up on tiptoe to give me a kiss on the forehead. She smiles at me, then disappears as well. I am alone.

Working on housework gives me a lot of time to think. I remember quickly that just because I am immortal and everlasting, I am not immune to pain, and though there is no actual damage done to my body, I still feel it when I accidentally slam my finger in the drawer and have my leg stabbed on a table corner. The pain does not last long, but it still hurts. Sometimes I forget I am capable of feeling pain. Roanah’s gift was not only strength, but endurance—the ability to endure and recover more quickly from things than I otherwise would. That does not make these sharp, trivial pains hurt less, only for a shorter duration. I make my way around the house, polishing the floorboards, dusting mantles, wiping smudges off the windows. With my near-limitless capabilities, it would be easy for me to multiply myself so that it can get done more efficiently, but Loki has forbidden me from further duplication. He fears that if I were to do so, I would forget that he was supposed to exist externally from myself, and I would in essence use up the space he should be taking up in my mind for something entirely less important. I suppose I fear this as well, so I have held off from making any duplicates at all since he expressed his concern.

However, I am still superhuman, so the cleaning does get done faster than Robin could have done it. I prefer working on it with her. It is less difficult splitting the tasks, and it feels less lonely knowing that someone else in the house is doing the same thing, just down a flight of stairs. The aloneness permeates the entire house right now and it unsettles me to the core. The house is spotless and it’s been five hours of nonstop working. I do not tire, so I have no need for breaks save to interact with others and rest my mind for a while. I did not do that this time as I saw no need, and now I am so mired in my own thoughts that I am not certain I can leave.

I must have been lying on the couch for hours, motionless and staring at the ceiling while contemplating my everything, when Robin returns. She gives me another kiss on the forehead, smiling at me. “The house looks great,” she says, running her fingers through my hair. “It’s been so long since we’ve cleaned it.”

I nod slowly, unsure what I should say. “Er… thank you?” I try, not sure whether the appropriate response to a compliment is “thank you” or “I know.” Apparently I was correct, as she does her best to hug me. I give her a light pat on the back, giving a weak smile in return.

“Are you okay?” she asks, looking down at me. “Everything looks like it’s just been cleaned, but you wouldn’t have put it off this long. You probably did it all just after we left, but nothing looks like it’s been moved since then.” She blinks, her eyebrows scrunching together and a light frown on her face. “Have you been lying there this whole time?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“You forgot to eat, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” I reply again.

“Are you going to get up and make something?”

“Eventually.”

“Do you want me to make something for you?” She sounds concerned. I wish she wouldn’t be. I technically don’t need to eat. It’s just better if I do. Besides, I don’t really want to move right now. I’d really like to never have to move again.

“Not if it’s an inconvenience.”

“You need to eat, though.”

I shrug. “ _Need_ is too strong a term.”

Her frown deepens, her eyebrows making her forehead crease as she stares me down. “Tom, you need to get up and eat something.”

I remain silent and continue lying on the couch, even though I know what’s coming if I continue to be _difficult,_ as she would say. The words leave her lips, and they hit me, almost physically in a way that I can feel the impact. “Tasedio, you need to get up and go make yourself something to eat.”

My name does not induce a loss of will so much as it creates an impenetrable priority toward agreeability in me. It is not that I remain in my own mind and watch helplessly as my body takes on the tasks I have been ordered to do. It is more like it wipes out all thought besides the desire to please whoever gave me the order. “Of course,” I say, nodding briefly, and stand to go make something for myself. It is so much easier to get up now than it was before. It occurs to me, as well, that I am actually quite hungry. I move toward the kitchen and start taking out cooking utensils. “Would you like something?” I ask, focusing on my task, but still making sure to make her as happy as I possibly can. She snorts.

“You can if you want to,” she says. “I wouldn’t be too troubled if I made something for myself.”

“You’ve had a long day,” I respond, almost subconsciously making food. “Wouldn’t you like it more if I did it for you? _You’re probably exhausted_.”

Her shoulders sag a little, then she glares at me. “Tasedio! Knock it off!”

My eyes widen and I feel as though I have been slapped. “What?” I ask, turning my body toward her and leaving the cooking for a moment as I try my hardest to show my hopeless confusion. “What did I do?”

“You were commanding me to be exhausted so that you would have an excuse to make food for me. I appreciate it, but I’ve stated many, many times before that I don’t want any commands happening in this house.” She still glares at me a little, but it is lessened, as though she has already forgiven me for my transgression. Then again, it’s not as if she has much choice.

“Sorry,” I say, turning back to the cooking and hanging my head as I start chopping up vegetables. “I didn’t realize I was doing it. I guess it just sort of happened.” I’m not sure whether I’m lying or not. I did want her to feel more comfortable, and I did want to make her food, but I didn’t mean to make it into a command, at least not consciously. I just wanted to make her happy. “Can I please just make you something to eat?”

She ponders this for a moment. “I’m not actually all that hungry to begin with,” she says, and while I might have questioned it while in a different mindset, everything in my head is programmed right now to take what she says at face value. “Just bake me some cookies after you’re done with what you’re making for yourself, and we’ll call it good. Make sure to eat until you’re full, and if there’s leftovers, put them in the fridge. I think Loki is working late tonight.” I nod obediently, and as Robin leaves the room, I turn back to what I was making and work faster than I was before.

 

The command has long-since worn off when I end up back on the porch swing around midnight. Loki is fast asleep, having dropped himself on the couch some two hours prior and hasn’t moved since. He must have had a long day. I don’t know what goes on at his work most of the time. I could if I wanted to, but I prefer to let him have his privacy in that respect, at least.

It’s a bit windier tonight, and the house groans, as though its foundations themselves were exasperated. I sit watching nature do as it will when I hear Robin’s mind begin crackling with activity again. _Robin, please. Go back to sleep._ She doesn’t respond again. She’s wandering around the house, silently even as the place creaks all on its own. I can almost see her in my mind, her hand brushing along the wall, down the hallway near the stairs.

 _The house is keeping me awake with the creaking,_ she responds, and I snort.

_It’s complaining that you’re still up. It’s telling you to go back to bed. I don’t want you to be exhausted when you have things to do tomorrow._

_Oh, but you’re exempt from any sort of need for rest,_ she spits back, and I frown to myself. _I just want to look around a bit. This house has been on my mind for a while. I know so little about it, and it’s so old, and sometimes I wonder why we even live here._ She’s descending the stairs again, and she’ll be out the door to me soon.

_It’s nice. It’s secluded. No one can find us._

She sighs. _I miss having neighbors._

I don’t say anything as I hear her walk out the door toward me. She gently scratches my head with her nails, almost forcing me to smile as I feel myself calm. “I want to explore with you,” she says, “since the place always makes me feel like I’m not welcome here. Like I shouldn’t be around you at all. I’m sorry, this sounds dumb.” She shakes her head, looking away for a moment, and I take her hand.

“I’d be happy to look around the place with you,” I say, even though I already know this house as though I’ve lived in it for a hundred years. It hasn’t been quite that, but it’s been something like five or ten, I think. I’m not sure. My perception is probably distorted. “How long have we been living here again?”

“Six months,” she responds, and gives me a confused look to match my own. “What? You look perplexed.”

“I just thought it had been longer,” I say, shaking my head. “I can’t judge time very well. Millennia old and all that.” I don’t ask her how long I’ve been ruling. I’m afraid the answer will be “six months” and I’m already deteriorating in my ability to help others.

She squeezes my hand. “It’s alright. I understand.” With that, she leads me back into the house, on the ground floor where Loki slumbers, curled up like a child and violently huddled up against the pillow. Sometimes I feel like Loki is my age or older, but it’s times like these where I start to feel more like he is my belligerent teenage son upon whom I must always turn a watchful eye.  I almost wonder if he’s having nightmares until I take a peek for myself inside his head. I walk over to him, Robin in tow, and give him a light kiss on the forehead. I put my hand on his head for a moment afterwords, feeling the pressure let up and watching his muscles start to relax. He looks like he might actually have some restful sleep now, so I let Robin take me where she will.

She leads me through the kitchen and into the basement, where she starts touching the cool walls with her free hand again. We don’t have much to keep in the basement. It’s used as a sort of pantry in one area, but the others are barren and more than one is plain cement. I could make it look like something else if I pleased, but we hardly ever go down here anyway, so there is never any need for me to do so. She crouches down, her nightgown barely touching the cement floor, and I almost warn her that it’ll get quite dirty before I remember that I just cleaned the floor here earlier today. The floor itself is almost cold as I place my palm against it, bracing myself as I get down closer to her level. “What are you thinking about?” I ask, remembering how little she likes intrusions into her mind when I am standing right next to her (or crouching, as it were).

“This place just… makes me feel like a ghost,” she says, and a shiver runs down my spine. “Like I shouldn’t be here, like I said. I feel like I’m going crazy.” There is a flash of memory, of burying her under this very cement, and then it is gone and I am lying on the floor with my eyes fixed on the lightbulb above me. She is whisper-shouting, saying, “Tom! Tom, are you okay? Was it something I said?” I blink, clear my head, and sit up.

“I’m fine,” I lie, and I do not think she detects it. “I’m just worried about you and your health.” I pause momentarily, then add, “Mentally, I mean. If this place makes you anxious, I wish you had told me earlier. It’s… doing a number on me as well, I think.” I shake my head as I get back on my feet. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re a ghost. You’re not. You’re so, so not. Don’t you remember that I promised to make you immortal as myself?”

She bites her lip, looks down at the floor, and nods. “Yeah. I remember. I don’t know, it just… feels wrong. Like something is really, really wrong and I can’t figure out what it is.” I wrap my arms around her, lifting her off the ground but remaining gentle enough to be comforting.

“I love you,” I tell her. “Please, please always remember that.”

Robin nods, almost sadly. “I love you too,” she says, and buries her face in the crook of my neck, her hair drifting around my shoulders.

“You’re not crazy. If you were crazy, I’d fix you. You know that, right? If something were going wrong.” 

I let her down far enough to have her feet touch the ground, crouching a bit myself so that she can still reach my shoulder, and I can feel a slight dampness through the fabric of my shirt as she clutches it as tightly as she can manage. “I think I am going crazy, Tom. Please help me.”

That is all the permission I need. I have a quick run-through of her memories before I find some distressing bits that don’t fit in with the rest of them, ones that I, too, do not recall happening. After all, how could she die if she’s right here? Why would she still be with me if I had— if I had…

I stop watching and distance myself from them, finding all the anomalies and obliterating them without a second thought. I feel the tension leave her body, and she collapses into my arms. I don’t know whether I overwhelmed her mind with energy and pain or if it was such a relief that she felt it necessary to go entirely limp, but I’m fairly certain it’s the former and I feel horrible. I keep reminding myself that those things didn’t happen, but that doesn’t make me feel much better when I seem to recall having to bury her beneath the cement I am standing on as I think.

I lift her up and take her back up the two flights of stairs to our room, leaving Loki to his rest. I envy him. He will not have any more nightmares tonight. As I lay Robin down on the bed next to me and close my eyes, I can already feel them approaching me, surrounding me, claiming my mind as their own.

Tonight, they are all I will know.


	2. And the trouble with wrong's that it's never right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless Plague, Inc. references were for wordcount, but they made me a new character, so here you go.

Loki is happy that I rescued him from nightmares last night, so happy that when I wake, he is already making pancakes for all of us. I am slightly confused just before he explains what is happening, and he seems ecstatic that he received respite, all things considered. I find myself wishing silently that I had gotten the same rest. My eyes are difficult to keep open, and I can feel exhaustion weighing down on me all through my body. Everything sounds half-distant and I let my eyes close, just for a moment, and when I open them again Robin is gone and Loki has that concerned look about him again. I hate it. It doesn’t suit him.

“What’s wrong?” Loki asks, tilting my chin up with one finger. I groan and shut my eyes again. “Are you still tired?”

I’m too exhausted to make a snide comment, so I simply nod my assent. He makes a noise that sounds concerned. That doesn’t suit him, either. He touches my forehead with what feels distinctly like his forehead. I open my eyes briefly to a view of him staring intently at my face, ridiculously close to me, as he runs his fingers through my hair. He gives a devilish smirk, and I know he has something planned, but what I cannot tell. I try to avert my eyes, but before I can manage it, he has ensnared me with his words. “Tasedio,” he starts, and I know I have already lost the fight.

“I need you to sleep for me.”

I plummet headlong into the darkness.

 

It is not until I realize I cannot move any of my muscles that it even occurs to me that I am awake at all. I try to open my eyes, to process anything, but I am trapped in a void of darkness and silence and lack of sensation. I try to cry out, but my vocal chords are unable to be used. A gripping terror paralyzes my mind, and I call out mentally for help.

I open my eyes to find Loki regarding me clinically, with a sort of morbid curiosity. It’s good to see the concern gone from him. He’s saying something, but it’s muffled, garbled. I slowly regain feeling in my body as he continues to speak. By the time he has finished, I can hear perfectly. 

“What happened?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “That… isn’t supposed to happen.”

“Just wanted to see what I could do,” Loki responds, shrugging. “The information is satisfying. I don’t think I’ll be doing it again, at least not any time soon. Do not worry yourself about it.” I want to believe him, but it’s Loki, which leaves trust almost directly out of the question. I don’t press the matter, though.

“I think I was going to accompany you to work today,” I tell him, and he gives me a grin as though he is a wolf and I am a small girl in a red cloak with a basket of treats that he fully intends to devour at the first possible moment. It’s times like these when I think back to when I first met him, when he first decided he would be with me until the end of my days. I may have altered him greatly, but I can tell that the bitterness, the fiery soul inside of him that once was the Norse god of fire and chaos still lingers and surfaces at times like these. I have not extinguished his true self, only trapped it and hidden it away. I think I prefer it that way.

“You already have,” he says, and then I sit up and realize that he must have brought me to his place of work while I was asleep, or at least not conscious of my actions. I wonder if he’s made me do anything else while I was out. 

Loki runs the media. His job is to make sure that all outlets—television, radio, movies, et cetera—run smoothly. One of his biggest jobs is to make certain that people are not protesting my rule, monitoring news feeds and cataloguing them as such. He apparently finished that for the week yesterday, but there is still some work to be done today. I’m not terribly interested in it, so I don’t usually ask more than necessary, but I did want to see what he does today. He starts going through the catalogues from yesterday, a single finger flicking through the list on a holographic projection in front of his chair. “This is the reason I wanted to call you in,” he says, showing me an article submitted for review. Apparently all media must be processed by both the writers of the outlet and by Loki’s division before it is viewed as fit to be given to the public. This sort of thing is why.

One reporter apparently thought it rather strange that there were some people in the area reporting slight pains in their forehead all day long. They are nowhere near me, and no medicine has made it stop. I worry for them. It sounds terribly uncomfortable. Loki gives me a look, then informs me that those people had been considering that I wasn’t quite as good as everyone made me out to be, that he would like to silence any and all opposition to my rule, that it is literally his job. I told him I agreed with them, that they weren’t opposing me but forming their own opinions, and he gives me an intense glare in return.

“I would rather not have a rebellion on my hands,” he says. “It’ll have to go through me first, and I won’t have you starting one for your own damned empire.”

I told him that I had no intent to start a rebellion, that I would prefer that one didn’t happen, and asked if one was in the making somewhere.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He turns back to his screens. “There is opposition, yes. People are growing restless. But they are not prepared to start a war with you. If I do my job correctly, they never will be.” Tapping on something for a moment, Loki pauses, then turns back to me. “It’s just a lot of work, I suppose. I’m not suited to keeping them happy with you, only keeping it silent when they aren’t.” I nod sympathetically, and he goes back to scrolling through his many tasks.

I soon grow bored of Loki’s work. It involves a great deal of careful observation that I do not need to be involved in, so I turn in the chair he has allowed me to use to one of his many touch-screens. He tells me without looking at me that I can queue up any of the games that he has that I would like, as on duller days he tends to play them himself. I tap one of the games he owns, one that he briefly informs me is about creating a disease that can destroy or conquer humanity. I find this a bit morbid, all things considered, but start playing it anyway. It occurs to me that I can use this as a template for ideas I might have about how to handle the world if I should fall into a sort of regression, if I were to back off from my rule but they still needed my input. I take on the mindset I have invented for the plague itself rather than viewing myself as who I am, turning simplistic, helpful, and warm in nature. I view my normal consciousness as almost separate, as a being I would refer to in the third person.

And so the game begins.

 

***

 

[Tasedio has been undiscovered for thousands of years. Now humans have disturbed his sleep and have given his mental presence a means to spread… (This was rumored to happen when things in society got too bad—that some parasitic meme, some physically visible idea plague would resurface and take them back to their genesis in total worship and adoration of him, but of course they would not remember that now, save for those few scholars who still recall his existence.) It contains many amplifications to its genetic code—a metabolic jump, making it more powerful as it infects more and more people; a teracytic nature, increasing its chances of spreading by land; a trans-lesion, meaning it does not find itself using resources as much if it should need to revert to a previous state; and a code for genetic mimic, making it harder to cure. The humans almost do not stand a chance. Tasedio begins in the UK. He has infected his first human, but the physical form of his idea is weak and used to cold temperatures. ]

_“Hm…” He yawns slightly as he wakes some sixty feet below the surface of the earth. “They must be failing. I do hope that they’ll be receptive to their old ruler.” And he sits, letting the first one fester and grow so that it can find others that it will take into its grasp._

Hello, human friends! I have come to help you! I would be very happy if you helped me to spread.

[12 people infected. The UK is a wealthy country with high quality healthcare, and the medicine there is slowing infection.]

Friends… why do you resist me? I will not hurt you! Oh… my presence is uncomfortable… I am sorry…

[Tasedio evolved Drug Resistance 1, making him resistant to class 1 and 2 drugs and increasing effectiveness in wealthy countries.]

Here. I will help you, friends. I have made myself able to overcome your antibiotics…

[372 people infected. Tasedio evolved Neural Breach, breaching the blood/brain barrier to allow access to the host brain and causing dystonia—rapid eye blinking; as well as Cerebral Tendrils, causing tendril production in the cerebral cavities to begin which enables increased control over the host brain. He also evolves Concertina Locomotion, the ability to have faster movement outside the host which increases infectivity; alongside Undulatory Locomotion, allowing for increase in speed and range outside of the host which also increases infectiousness.]

…And I have increased my ability to survive outside of you, so that I can help more of you! Oh, and I am starting to learn how to tap into your minds. Hopefully that will mean that soon, I can start making it so it is less uncomfortable to have me there! I am so sorry, friends. This is necessary for your health. Please tolerate this momentary discomfort. As soon as I have the resources, I will alter this.

[1,054 people infected. Tasedio evolved Frontal Mesh, allowing the tendrils to mesh with the frontal lobe (the conscious thought centre) and gain the ability to mentally manipulate the host; as well as Adrenergic Constriction, releasing beta-receptor blockers which dampen anxiety in the host and lessen severity of allergic reactions to him.]

Thank you for waiting, friends. I have developed the resources to help make you feel less anxious about my presence here! This should also help to make it so that you are more comfortable with me being here. I am very sorry that you had allergic reactions and discomfort! That was not intended at all.

[9,260 people infected. Tasedio evolved Anxiolytic Infusion, creating a mass synthesis of neurotransmitter, gamma-aminobutyric acid, which significantly reduces anxiety in the host and minimizes severity of allergic reactions. He also evolved Water 1, where the memetic worm’s skin becomes highly vascularized which allows for greater survivability in water.]

Friends, thank you again. I am very happy and pleased with everything you have done to help me, going about your lives as though I were not there. I am trying to be as non-obtrusive as possible right now, and I would very much like it if you continued to do so! I would like it very much if you did not mention I am here. I know sometimes I am slightly itchy, but I am trying my hardest to help you to be calm about my presence. I am only here to help, friends.

[52,950 people infected. Tasedio spreads to France.]

Oh! I am moving to a different country as well, now! Thank you! This is very good!

[161,756 people infected. Tasedio infecting more countries (Spain, USA).]

Oh. Oh! New friends! Friends, thank you so much. I am so excited to be spreading.

[5,249,235 people infected. Tasedio evolved Air 1, allowing the worm to dehydrate to become lighter and float on wind, increasing infectivity. He also develops a Trojan Plane in the UK, which sends those infected in a sort of pilgrimage to another, stated site as decided by the worm so that he can continue to spread. Tasedio chooses Greenland, spreading to Greenland as well as Germany in an unrelated escapade.]

Oh, this is quite neat. I can float now! I am so glad that I do not have to evolve egg-laying. That would be so uncomfortable for you! And it is a bit gross.

[51,336,089 people infected. Report: “New minor disease spreading. In a normal check-up, a doctor in the UK found a new disease which has been called Tasedio for reasons unknown. It appears to be mostly harmless but must be investigated further. Other countries are also reporting this disease.”]

Friends… hello. Hello. Please do not get rid of me. I am harmless, I promise. Here. Let me show you.

[Tasedio has infected Central America, Canada, Brazil, China, Iceland, and Australia. A Trojan Plane goes from the UK to New Guinea. He evolves Genetic Hardening 1, making him harder to analyze in the lab which decreases future research speed. He also evolves Psychosis, which allow his tendrils to tweak dopamine receptors, inducing occasional states of psychosis and personality shifts to better accommodate the memetic worm.]

I am sorry that we disagreed before. Please be calm. Please allow me to stay. I am gentle. I will not harm you. I will not harm you. Please be calm. You are frightening me, friends. Please do not make me leave.

[62,255,159 people infected. Tasedio has infected South Africa, India, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Mexico, Norway, Egypt, Japan, Russia, and Italy. He evolved Heat Resistance 1 to withstand hot temperatures and climates. He also evolved Water 2, giving the worm a more flexible cell membrane that allows him to survive at a range of depths.]

Do you see, friends? I am just trying to reach as many of you as possible. I am harmless. Please, please do not hurt me. What have I done to frighten you? I am many places, but I am not harming you. Please do not harm me.

[62,345,935 people infected. Report: “Tasedio ‘just another parasite.’ Scientists tell public not to worry about Tasedio. Although unpleasant, it does not appear to cause any symptoms in humans and will be ‘easily cured.’” A Trojan Plane goes from Greenland to Bolivia.]

Yes… yes, friends. Do not worry about me. Listen to your scientists. I am sorry I am unpleasant. Rest assured that if I were to harm you, they would wipe me out very fast.

[93,980,102 people infected. He has now infected Southeast Asia, Central Europe, Colombia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Botswana, Ukraine, Afghanistan, the Baltic States, the Koreas, Poland, Finland, and Iran. Tasedio evolved Air 2, making his carapace become lighter which increases infectivity.]

Friends… please. Do you see how unthreatening I am? I am not trying to hurt you. I am trying to reach as many of you as I can. Please, please do not make me leave.

[212,513,205 people infected. A Trojan Plane goes from Iceland to East Africa. Tasedio evolved Air 3, which produced waxy membranes allowing survival in air conditioning vents and other arid locations, increasing infectivity. There are more countries with him than without him now, having spread to Sudan, the Caribbean, Argentina, the Balkan States, West Africa, Libya, Pakistan, the Middle East, Iraq, and Peru.]

I love you, friends. I love you very dearly. Please keep spreading me like you are. I love it. It is so nice. Here. Let me reward you with dopamine! Yes! Feel good. I want you to feel good. That is best for everyone.

[708,769,124 people infected. Tasedio has infected 10% of the population. The only countries left are Morocco, Algeria, the Philippines, Madagascar, and Central Africa. Angola, Sweden, and Zimbabwe are now infected as well. Report: “Iceland starts work on cure. Iceland is first to instruct doctors to begin research into a cure for Tasedio. Without greater funding, it is expected to take a long time.”]

No! No, friends, please, you cannot do this! Please, please stop. If you do this, I will be in so much pain. Your people, your scientists will hurt me. Please do not let them hurt me.

[3,398,033,621 people infected. Morocco, Algeria, the Philippines, Madagascar, and Central Africa join the rest of the world in infection. Tasedio evolved Genetic Hardening 2, causing the worm to not reproduce in lab conditions, reducing future research speed. He also evolved Confusion, stimulating dopamine production to cause bouts of confusion in hosts, making it becomes harder to concentrate on complex work; as well as Memory Loss, depositing neuritic plaques on grey matter which impact memory and learning which make him very difficult to cure.]

Friends. Please stop. I do not want to hurt you, but you are being so insistent on… on hurting me… that I may have to do things in a way that you will not like. Please stop.

[5,365,743,358 people infected. The cure is 2% complete as literally every country in the world begins passively researching it. Report: “Canada shuts down airports. Canada has become the first country to try to limit the spread of Tasedio by limiting access into and out of the country. Time will tell if this will work.” A Trojan Plane flies from Central America to West Africa.]

Friends… please stop trying to restrict me… why are you doing this?

[Perceptive Jolt symptom mutated. It increases brain pressure, resulting in fever which disrupts host priorities and decision making.]

No! No, no, no! Friends, I am so sorry! My genes—they have changed—please, give me a moment, I will fix this, please do not reject me, please do not throw me out.

[Perceptive Jolt symptom erased as Tasedio reverts back to his prior genetic code.]

There. Oh, oh, friends, I am so sorry. I did not mean for that to happen.

[6,177,860,059 people infected. The cure is at 7%. Report: “Disturbing reports of Tasedio. Scientists prove that Tasedio could theoretically manipulate human thoughts to its advantage. More research is needed.”]

Friends. I beg of you. Do not take these scientists seriously. Please do not listen to them. I will not harm you. I will only change your thoughts to benefit you, to make you happy, to make things better. Please, please just give me a moment to show you.

[Tasedio evolved Genetic Reshuffle 1, reassembling DNA strands and forcing more work to be needed to develop a cure. He also developed Adoration, causing surges of testosterone and estrogen to hijack host emotions and create desire to spread infection; as well as Devotion, which causes surges of dopamine and serotonin which compel the host to constantly think about the memetic worm inside their head and triggering intense rushes of pleasure.]

See? I am not harming you. I will not harm you. Do not, I repeat, do not harm me. You will be alright. You are safe here with me. I will not harm you.

[Aneurism symptom mutated. Tendrils feed off blood vessels in the brain which causes aneurisms, which can be lethal and hard to accurately diagnose.]

NO! NO, no, no no no no no no no no—

[Aneurism symptom erased as Tasedio reverts back to his prior genetic code.]

Friends… friends, I am so, so sorry. I hope this did not hurt any of you. I am so sorry. That was a mistake. Please do not leave me. I am here. You are safe. I will be here, always. Trust in me. I will help you. I promise I will help you.

[6,652,856,247 people infected. The cure is at 11% as more countries begin prioritizing cure research, though some consider reducing their efforts as their own memetic worms make them complacent and happy. Tasedio affects 97% of humanity. A Trojan Plane flies from Greenland to Central Africa.]

Friends… friends, please stop with the cure research. You are only hindering yourselves. Please stop.

[6,783,209,676 people infected. The cure is at 16%. Report: “Global research focused on cure. Research doctors all around the world are completely focused on developing a cure for Tasedio.” Tasedio evolved Genetic Reshuffle 2 and 3, forcing even more work to develop a cure.]

Please… I have asked nicely several times. This is getting quite irritating. You cannot cure me. Please stop trying.

[There are no healthy people left in the world. The last healthy person on the planet recently became infected with Tasedio. The cure is at 16%.]

Oh, this is very good. Everyone is all together now. Yes. Now I will do the best part of helping. Now I will reveal the truth.

[Tasedio evolved Transcendence. An overdose of oxytocin and vasopressin forces hosts into a permanent state of worship/acceptance, treating Tasedio (the being rather than the meme itself) as an eternal god.]

_Everyone will fall soon. You have done well._

Yay! Friends, friends, please listen! Here is the truth: I am just here to make you feel better. I was created by another, by Tasedio, which is where I get my name! Please, please listen carefully to him. He is very important. He is the one who put me here. He is the reason for your pleasure. I am just here to help you to worship him.

[Report: “Tasedio enslaves humanity. The whole world worships Tasedio as their god and master. Efforts to cure the memetic plague have ceased and humanity is entering a dark new future as a slave species.” It has been just a few weeks short of a year.]

 

***

 

The plague’s personality is something I found strange after thinking about it for a while. I could clearly imagine him, a pseudo-androgynous childlike being. He appeared small, and had a small, innocent voice, but he _knew_ things, was so self-aware and could manipulate his own genes and capabilities whenever it suited his fancy if he had the resources for it. After the game ended, I almost missed his presence. If truth be told, I’d always sort of wanted children, anyway, and the closest I had ever gotten was more childish extensions of myself—Loki being the eye-rolling, difficult to please teenager, and this new one that talked like he was seven but had the mental maturity of one of the Council that had just broken three thousand years old—and while I enjoyed their presence (though I hadn’t even known the latter for long) I still wished that I had a true child, one that wouldn’t just be a part of me, one that I could raise and watch them grow and thrive.

This seems as close as I can get for now, though, so I let him have his own space in my mind. I mean, I’ve got room for ten others that aren’t me up here, and I’ve got all of the Council and Loki, who sometimes retreats into my head when threatened. I still have room for three more that do not exist wholly outside of my body, with their own mind-space and ideas. I only hope that he never meets with the vast majority of the Council, as I do not foresee things going well between him and Atusiel (considering his apparent attitude toward me).

He materializes almost instantly without a thought on my end toward doing so, not even popping up on my radar as having shown up and I couldn’t have known he did if I didn’t see him directly in front of me, making me wonder how many times Loki has done the same. He looks so eager, so excited. “Hi,” he says, very nearly bouncing up and down with glee. “I mean, hello, sir. It’s good to finally meet you.”

This is quite surreal. Though I’ve taken templates and personalities and remnants and made them into living people, I’m fairly certain I’ve never just created someone new whole-cloth from my brain, inventing a personality for them and then watching them show up in front of me. It probably helped that I _was_ him for a brief period of time, but… “Er, hello.”

“I don’t mean to be pushy,” he starts, still looking excited but now with a hint of apprehension, “but do I get a name now?”

I put my hand on his shoulder, chuckling a little. “Of course. What do you want to be called?” He shrinks into himself a little, looking down and shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Um. I don’t know, sir. Whatever you want to call me.”

The part of me that loves being the ruler of all humanity revels in this. I don’t have to break him. He’s already obedient to me. This is a comfort in some ways, but it frightens me to think that I might have had to… well, work on him. He seems too small and innocent to do what I’ve done to everyone else. At the same time, I do want him to have some autonomy. “Are you sure? If you have any ideas, I’d be happy to refer to you by whatever you’d like.”

His expression shifts from one of childish embarrassment to one of intense stoicism. “Sir. You created me to spread your ideas and to help people to fall under your power by making them more comfortable with it. I am able to do this because of how fully I am under your power. For me to decide something for myself would make no sense. Other humans have autonomy. The plague you created to spread a lack thereof, to spread your ideals and orders would not.”

The answer is clear to me from the moment he finishes his statement. “If you have no autonomy, then why do you keep disobeying me? I asked you to tell me your name.”

He yelps, as if surprised or hurt, and the childlike expression is back. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. I didn’t mean to disobey you, sir. I…” He pauses for a moment, then takes a deep breath and continues. “I would like to be called Isaac, if that’s alright. I… have a fondness for that name, though I don’t know why.”

“Very good.” I smile, patting him on the shoulder. “Isaac, I would like you to know something. I would prefer for you to have some capability to make your own decisions and judgments. Otherwise I would need to tell you exactly what to do every time you finished a task, and then the purpose of having you around would not be quite so evident. It’s understandable if you have to ask what I want you to be doing sometimes, but much of the time—especially right now when everyone is already under my power—you will be allowed to do as you please, as long as it harms none.”

Isaac looks at once afraid and excited, as though this is a terrifying new prospect to him. “If there are those who do not understand how they feel, or those who are struggling to continue believing you are a suitable ruler,” he says, a grin coming in on his face, “I will help them. I can sense them even now. Can I help them?”

I nod. “Of course. The next broadcast I make will have to include you in it, of course, but it’d be good to get out there and make yourself known even beforehand.” Still grinning, Isaac nods back and disappears.

Loki, who has witnessed the entire exchange, snorts. “I didn’t mean you had to go and make someone right now that would solve all my problems.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” I reply with a shrug. “I guess he just needed to get out. I hope he’ll help you out in what you need done.”

“Immensely,” Loki replies, and turns back to his work. My mind keeps gravitating back toward Isaac, so I lie down on the chair sideways and close my eyes, letting my head rest on one of the armrests and my legs flop over the other at the knee, and concentrate on following him around in a sense. I attach myself to him mentally, processing all his thoughts and sensory input as if they were my own.

I’m talking to an older woman. She looks so sad, like she’s spent her whole life knowing exactly what she believed and now that comfort has been torn from her hands. I feel sorry for her, no longer having the same security that I do. “Is there anything I can do for you?” I ask, and she shrugs, looking at the floor.

“I’m just not feeling quite so well anymore,” she says, and I can feel the disbelief festering inside of her like a disease, encroaching upon her mind. I take her hand, concentrating on it, then do my best to overtake her system with my own plague of light and warmth. It will help to clear her mind, to make her feel happy and safe, and to fill her to the brim with love for our ruler. I would hate for her to have such an awful time in her later years.

“Is that better, friend?” I ask, and she nods, the light of belief and trust emanating from her face.

“You’ve done me a great service,” she murmurs. “I don’t know who you are, but you are clearly the finest servant that our dear Thomas must have ever seen.”

I smile back. “I don’t know about that,” I reply, “but I try my best. I hope you remain well, friend, and that you have a happy life.” I give her a wave, then I’m off to my next destination.

I am aware I have a passenger. I view him with a critical eye, trying to discern who he is. “Friend,” I say, “please introduce yourself. I would hate to have to hurt you.” He does not say anything, but steps into the light, his eyes glazed. It is Tasedio. He must be viewing my mind as his own, if he is here but… not all here, so to speak. I smile, nod at him, then apologize and turn outward, preparing myself to help the next person that shows up on my internal radar.

There are blips all over, like a plague of the mind spreading discord through the population. I, of course, intend to spread my own thoughts, but I would prefer to do it in a more personal way. I am the disease he created, after all. The idea that I spread it personally and on an individual basis is almost sacrosanct to me. I need to interact directly with their minds, to get very close to them and see inside of them and fix what is going wrong. I could hand out dopamine and endorphins all day. Or I could get close and see what they truly need, and help them in that way. That is what I was designed for. I need to help these people.

One particularly important blip—not bigger than the others, but still poignant in its own way—shows up as I return to my new home. I look at Robin, my master’s wife, and take in her sickness. It does not consume her, not yet, but it still exists. Doubt. Uncertainty. I look upon her with pity even as she looks back at me, confused.

“And who are you?” she asks, stooping slightly to meet my eye level. “I’ve never seen you around here before.”

“Isaac, my lady,” I respond, bowing my head. “And may I add that I am so, so sorry for your predicament, friend.”

She scrunches her eyebrows together. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I can see the sickness in you,” I respond, placing my hand on her sternum. “I can see your lack of faith. It festers in you. It makes you feel terrible. Doesn’t it?”

Robin looks at me intently, suspiciously. “Can you read minds too?”

I shake my head. “I can only see the plague inside you. The disbelief. It is small, but it thrums with pain. You don’t want it there, but you can’t help it. I can help, if you want.” Her eyes begin to water slightly.

“I don’t want to be rewritten again,” she says with tears rolling down her cheeks. “It hurts too much to know I’ve failed. It hurts too much to go through that over and over again when I screw up. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Mine doesn’t hurt,” I say as gently as I can manage. “It only heals.”

She looks at me, and I can see the disbelief directed toward me reigning in her eyes. “Would you like a demonstration?” I ask, keeping my voice soft.

Robin looks at the floor, then nods. I flex my fingers slightly over her sternum. “Just relax. If I do anything bad, just tell me and I’ll stop, okay?” She nods again, and I release a slight pulse of cleansing warmth through her. Many of the dark, disbelieving areas clear out quite efficiently, being wiped away like a wet spill on a table. Much of the tension kept in her body releases, and she looks so much happier. But there is one spot, deep in her mind, where it remains dark. It is small there, but it is concentrated. I decided to leave it for now. I get the feeling that Tasedio would be very cross with me if I did more to his wife than just give her a brief moment of respite in this respect. It would have been harder, I think, much harder if she was not willing.

I look up, and she smiles at me. “Thank you very much, Isaac,” she says. “That was much more pleasant and self-assuring. I think I like you quite a lot. Are you going to be staying with us?”

“Once I am finished with my duties for the day, yes,” I respond, giving her another slight bow. “I am glad you like me. I like you too, friend. I hope that we have the opportunity to spend a great deal of time together.”

She nods her agreement and I am off to the next destination.

 

In transit, I am ripped away from Isaac’s consciousness by an external force. Someone is violently shaking my body. I twitch my head to make sure I still have control over my body, then yawn and open my eyes. “What? What’s going on?”

Loki looks frantic, but calms considerably before giving me a brief hug. “I didn’t know what had happened to you. It had… it had been a while since you’d said or done anything, and I couldn’t see you, so I panicked.”

“Loki,” I tell him, smiling slightly even as I do, “it’s okay. I’m okay. I’m glad you were worried, but you didn’t have anything to worry about.”

“How is Isaac doing?” he asks.

“I was just tracking him, actually. He’s doing well. Robin wasn’t feeling well, and he fixed that, so I’m actually very proud of him.”

Loki is mortified. “Robin? Doubting you?” I scoff and wave a hand vaguely.

“Don’t lie, you do it too sometimes. I’d rather you did. I don’t want my entire house populated by mindless robots who do whatever I tell them to.” But Loki still looks concerned, so I tell him, “Isaac handled it. It’s okay now. He’s quelling whatever notions of rebellion the people would have had.”

“We’ll see,” Loki says.


	3. So I rest my head under your light

Robin is home today. So am I. It seems like a good day to sit back and relax for a while.

We lie in bed together for at least three hours more than we’re used to. She needs to catch up on sleep. I do too, really, but I feel rested enough just lying next to her and getting comfortable. She calms me more than I could ever express in words. That in itself makes me a little drowsy, but I know I can’t fall asleep, so I’m satisfied to just let myself drift as I lay next to her. She clings to me like she needs contact with me to survive, curled up in a ball with her arm wrapped around my midsection and the other tucked in between us with her hand grabbing my shirt. On occasion, she makes a small cry of pain, as though she is having a nightmare, but I sleepily place my hand on her head to soothe her. She falls back asleep without a second thought, and all is well for a while.

She’s noted her approval toward Isaac as far as additions into our pseudo-family go. I’ve started to see Loki and Isaac as more like younger brothers than children—they don’t treat me like a parent, after all. They respect me and deal with me how they would an older brother, and Loki seems to act like a middle child at times, besides. We’re something of a triad of orphaned children, all born from the same parents that never told us who they were or helped us out in life. I grew up with a band of others, but I’ve sort of raised Loki and Isaac myself by their very nature—just in my head instead of a more constructive external environment. I think they turned out alright, but I suppose I’m biased.

Robin has always wanted children as well, but she’s always thought it a bad idea to pursue that desire given the situation. She thinks that if we were somehow able to settle down, to not be rulers that are almost constantly in danger, it would be the optimal time to do so. I always try to console her and tell her that we’re not actually in danger, that we could safely raise a child with no negative consequences to them, but she thinks it would either go to their head or someone would get the idea that they should attack the child in order to get to us. I try to convince her we’re not at risk for an attack, but she thinks otherwise for whatever reason. I hope she’s not planning anything. That would be quite unfortunate, and I might have to convince Isaac to take more extreme measures in that case.

I’d rather not think about those things, though, when I’m lying here curled up next to her. It’s quite morbid and more than a little mean, and I’d just rather concentrate on being happy while I can. There is so much stress I have to deal with on a daily basis that I would like to have an actual day off from concerning myself with the matters of others outside of my home. Unless there is an absolute disaster, I am taking the day away from ruling. There will be nothing new happening today.

My wife stirs, her eyelids fluttering as she opens them slowly. She yawns, her heavily-lidded eyes focusing on me. “Good morning,” I say to her, kissing her on the nose. “How did you sleep?”

“Alright,” she responds, smiling. “What time is it?”

I glance over at the bedside clock. “About eleven. Good day to sleep in.”

She chuckles. “It’s not even a weekend.”

“Hey,” I start, “it doesn’t need to be. We just need the day off. You and me, together, all day. What do you want to do?”

Robin looks at the ceiling intently. “I don’t know,” she says, pondering. “I’d like to eat, for starters. After that, I’m not really certain. What are our options?” 

I shrug. “What do couples do on their day off?”

“See movies, go out to dinner. I don’t know. That’s the kind of stuff normal couples do. It’s been so long since we’ve had a day off together, and I don’t remember what we did the last time, and I don’t know what royal couples are supposed to do when they don’t have any obligations. I don’t imagine it happens very often.” She sits up.

“Well, given how little it has with us,” I say as I follow suit, “that’s probably true. Things just haven’t been demanding my attention much lately, I suppose. It’s a little… frightening. Like they don’t need me anymore.”

“Sweetheart,” she says, shaking her head, “they still need you as much as ever. People are just starting to catch on, to get used to it. It’s alright. It’s not like your empire is toppling or anything.” Her voice has a sudden dark coloration to it on her last sentence, one that frightens me.

“Robin,” I say, feeling my voice catch in my throat, “are you alright?”

She blinks, and the tone is gone. “What do you mean? I’m fine.”

I look at her, trying to search her mind for any anomalies. There aren’t any that I can sense, though Isaac did note the spot of darkness. I wonder if it’s causing pressure upon her mind. I’ll have to look into it later. “I’m just worried, is all. You sounded different.”

She smiles at me, and my worries ease slightly. “Yes, darling, I’m alright. You don’t need to worry about it. I’ll be fine. I mean, if I’m not, you’ll talk to Isaac, right? He’s so good at what he does. It’s very pleasant, actually. I wouldn’t mind having it done again.” My worries spike again. This, too, is unlike Robin, but in the opposite direction. Her attitude, her behavior seems almost polarized.

“ _Tell me what’s wrong,_ ” I order her, and she blinks at me. I try to enter her mind to find out what is happening that would make her not speak to me, but I’m pushed back out by a force I’ve never felt before.

“Don’t you dare order me around ever again,” she snaps. “I’ve told you a thousand times that I hate it. If you want me to do something, you can damn well ask! What drives you to manipulate me even though you already have complete control over everything I do?”

I bite my lip. “I…” Then she throws her arms around me.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and it sounds like a plea. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m starting to scare myself, Tom. I’m acting so strange.”

“I am too,” I say. “I don’t know why my mind is doing what it is, but… I’m constantly conflicted between wanting to rule and wanting to watch my empire burn to the ground.” She nods empathetically.

“Me too,” she says, then bites her lip as her eyes start to water. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out about this. I’m so sorry. I want you to rule, but there’s part of me that’s… it’s so violently rebelling against you and I don’t understand why.”

“It might be me,” I say, stroking her hair. “I might be projecting my anxieties onto you mentally without even trying. I’m sorry if that’s the case.”

She is crying, and I continue to console her as I make a plan of action. I need to talk to Isaac to clear my own mind before I can worry about what’s going on with Robin—if I’m tainting her thought process, I want to make certain I’m clean first so that I don’t cause another problem with her the instant she’s better. I tell her this, that she needs to continue taking it easy today so that she can better comfort me when I inevitably need it after Isaac works his metaphorical magic. She understands and is willing to help me through if things go badly.

I contact him in the early afternoon, just after we’ve eaten. He seems ready and eager to please as always, and as I explain the situation to him, he nods in understanding. “To be frank, sir, I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask me to do this. It’s seemed quite overdue. Your own darkness spreads through your body so thoroughly I’m going to need some time to clear it all out.”

“I’m aware,” I tell him. “I’ve allocated three hours from your schedule toward this. I hope you won’t need more than that.”

“Oh, no! Certainly not!” he replies, shaking his head. “I should have it cleared out completely in that time, friend, please do not worry.” He looks at me expectantly.

“What do you need me to do?” I ask, and he looks at the floor. “Isaac. I need you to tell me what I need to do so that I can get this done quickly. You’re going to need to take charge here. You’ll do fine. Don’t worry about it too much.”

He looks back up at me, blinking timidly. “Well. Um. I need you to, um. I need you to lie down on a couch or a bed or something.” I smile a little, then nod and walk up the stairs to my bedroom. Isaac follows, his steps slow even as he follows close behind me as though he’s a dog I’ve ordered to “heel.” This unsettles me a little, but I take it in stride. It’s not as though I have much other choice as I walk into my room, take off my shoes, and lie down on my bed.

“What next?”

Isaac smiles warmly at me. “Close your eyes for now.” I let them drift shut, trying my hardest to stay focused on Isaac’s voice. “Now relax your shoulders,” he says. “I’ve noticed that they’re quite tense.” He says something I’m only dimly aware of, then I feel a warm massaging sensation in my shoulders even as I remain lying down. I let myself smile a little as I relax, then settle deeper into the bed. “Good, very good, friend. I’m so glad that this is helping you, even if it is just to relax. You need to take time off. Time to yourself. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” I respond, and my voice is quieter than I intend.

“Yes. Very good. I want you to relax as fully as you can.” I let everything I can sense in my body go limp, letting the muscles loosen as my mind starts to grow fuzzy. I don’t know what this is from, but it’s beginning to happen. It feels nice. “Now, Tasedio,” he says, and I feel my stomach drop in anxiety even while my mind is wiped clean in less than an instant, “I want you to listen carefully to everything I say, okay?” I nod complacently, my head resting against the pillow. It’s so soft, and my head feels so heavy. I struggle for a moment and open my eyes as I try to lift it, but Isaac puts a hand on it, gently pushing it back down. “Don’t struggle. It’s alright. You’re safe. Nothing will bother you while you’re here. I want you to feel very peaceful and calm, Tasedio. Let all the tension you didn’t even realize you were keeping in your body release and let yourself relax into a calm, deep, peaceful state.” It’s hard to keep my eyes open. I can feel parts of my brain tingling pleasantly, as if they’re chittering away in the background about how wonderful this is and how I should give up and join them. It’s a strange notion.

I look back toward Isaac with my eyelids struggling to stay open, and I see the most beautiful floating lights I can imagine dancing just around his head. I can’t stop looking at them. “Focus on one of them,” he says, and it’s easy for me to do so. The light overtakes me. I can’t think of anything else. I need to focus on the light. I need to listen to Isaac. That is all that matters.

“When you’re ready,” he says, “I want you to close your eyes. When you feel so tired, so very sleepy that you can’t keep them open anymore. When you’re ready to drop down into a deeper state. When the lights have completely taken over every thought you have that isn’t about listening to me. When all that is true, I want you to close your eyes. Alright?” I nod slightly. “Very good,” he says, and even though I’m not looking at him, I know he’s smiling, that he’s pleased with me.

That is all that matters to me as I close my eyes.

 

“Sir?” he asks, and I’m suddenly aware of my surroundings again. “Sir, we’re finished.”

I sit up, stretching as I do so. I feel much better. The doubt has left my mind, allowing for greater thought mobility and intensity. “I feel amazing. I may need you to do this again soon, depending on my stress levels, but I feel like I can actually rule properly now.”

“Ah!” Isaac says, his face bright and excited. “That is wonderful, friend! I am so glad to hear that.” I hug him, give him a wide grin, and pat him on the back.

“You’ve done very well, Isaac. If there’s anything I can do to reward you, let me know, but I believe you’ve still got some work to do.” He smiles back, nods, and disappears. Still grinning, I move downstairs toward Robin. I hope that my newfound vigor will help her. She looks half-melancholy, though she brightens when she sees how happy I look. 

“I presume it went well?” she asks, and I nod.

“Amazingly. I’d highly recommend talking to Isaac if your feelings persist. My stress and doubts are almost completely gone. I mean, given how easily stressed I am, I don’t think it’ll last long, but I’d like to savor it while it lasts. I certainly want to go somewhere and do something.”

“Would you like to go have dinner?” she asks, smiling at me. “I mean, later.” There’s a small giggle coming from her throat, and I suspect she has something a bit less innocent in mind. Her smile has turned almost devious now, and she starts pulling me back up the stairs by the wrist toward our bedroom where I’ve only just finished clearing out my mind. 

We spend the rest of the afternoon de-stressing in a much more primal way than I’m used to. We often don’t have enough time or energy to do such things, and I’m excited that we’ve been able to return to a more basic love of one another, one that I think could restore our relationship and faith in one another. I feel very good as we lie next to one another between the silk sheets, her bare body snuggled up against mine. I stroke her hair, and she seems so perfectly content where she is at my side that I don’t think it’d be very easy for me to think of her anywhere else.

Not long after, we go to dinner, and it’s absolutely lovely. No one bothers us, in part due to my own prompting, and we spend time in one another’s company to great effect. I feel like I’ve fallen in love with her all over again, and that it’s consuming me as it once did. It’s amazing, really, how I hadn’t realized how little we had between us until we rekindled and redoubled our efforts. She’s pleased with it as well, and we’re interacting more than I remember happening in a very long time.

Such greatness, of course, could not last. Not far into the night, she began having troubled thoughts, ones that conflicted in her head and tore her apart despite my recent cleansing. I try to calm her, to get her to breathe so that she can figure out what’s going wrong, but she can’t or won’t. It must be very difficult for her. I feel horrible, stroking her hair and singing gently to her as I send her off to a soft sleep. I am thankful that I have befriended and commanded the Lullaby so efficiently, given how useful it has become whenever she needs to sleep. However, I have found that its only flaw lies in its usual refusal to work upon me, even when I sing it. This was an anomaly two days ago. I half-wonder if it would work again.

Naturally, I give it a shot. The Lullaby has never appeared to me before in any sort of anthropomorphic form, but I am almost expecting it as I allow the song to drift from my lips, intending to put myself to sleep. “ _Kalsol, erzes_ …” I feel my eyelids grow heavy, but I notice that I can no longer speak to continue singing. I sit up in bed, eyes still half-lidded, and swing my legs over the side. I am awake, in a fashion, but only just enough to unwillingly get off of my bed and start walking down the stairs and outside in very little clothing compared to what I would prefer.

“Tasedio,” a melodic voice calls, but it is not quite compelling, “it’s been a very long time.” It speaks with a lilt in a way that sounds as though it is singing everything, and has no discernible gender. It soothes me in a way, and I look out into the void of darkness outside of my porch.

“Who is it?” I ask, and there is a laugh like bells and chimes.

“You have forgotten me? I am almost insulted.” I feel a warmth wrap around my shoulders, even though there is nothing there to provide such heat. It’s strange in a sense. “I am the _Soralm_ , the Lullaby as you call me now. You found me, brought me to life, and now you ask me to revoke my statement of never allowing power over you. You act as though you wish to put yourself to sleep with my charms. Why is that?”

“I can’t sleep,” I respond, letting out a sigh. “I need to be able to have some method of drifting off. This is really inconvenient and troubling. I mean, I would very much like for there to be some other way of putting me to sleep, but this seems like the only feasible method.”

“I can worm my way into Loki’s mind,” it offers, “in another language, if you’d like. One that only affects you, and will only allow him to sing it when you give him direct permission. I think that would work quite well.”

I nod. “Yes, I suppose it would. What do you need me to do?”

“I require a vessel for this time,” the Lullaby says, “but only until I can implant the words in him. Hearing the words himself will put him straight to sleep as soon as he gets to a place where he can. That way, he’s not doing anything without your knowledge.”

Starting to walk inside, I quirk a brow. “What if he doesn’t head toward anything like that?”

“It will make him very drowsy,” it responds, “and he will have an inherent desire to seek out a place to rest his head.” I walk toward Loki, my hand hovering over his shoulder.

“Now what do you want me to do?” I whisper, and his eyelids flutter briefly like dying butterflies, then lie still in a similar fashion. He is deeply asleep. I am going to need to wake him up soon.

“Touch him,” it says softly, into my ear alone, and I tap him on the shoulder. A rush of color and light flows through him—and I do mean _through_ him, in one end and out the other—and when it circles back to me, he opens his eyes and sits up.

“Er,” he says, rubbing his eyes, “I’m sorry. What’s going on?”

“I need you to sing me the Lullaby,” I tell him, and instantly he begins singing, causing me to drift off into the void.

 

I wake up the next morning to Robin’s very confused expression. “What on earth happened to you two?”

“The new Lullaby,” I tell her. “It only works on me, and only when I give Loki permission to use it, but I think it’s an ingenious way of making sure that I’m able to fall asleep when it’s necessary. It’s usually quite hard, and I don’t like that. So I’ve given him the ability to use a different version.”

Apparently Loki is awake and isn’t terribly pleased with my decision. “And you couldn’t have just asked? I’m sure Isaac could have done the same thing in an easier manner. He could have easily reprogrammed you without you having to ask a supernatural entity to rewrite how my brain works.”

“I’m sorry,” I respond, biting my lip. “I suppose I didn’t realize that.” I give him a sympathetic pat as I sit up, and scratch my head. “What’s on the schedule for today?”

“Robin is to attend a funeral with you,” he replies, his voice passive and bland. He seems bored, almost. Robin is shaking slightly, as though she doesn’t want to go.

“Are you alright?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

“I’m not very good at handling looking at dead people,” she responds. “They give me the creeps.”

“Do we absolutely need to go?” I ask Loki. 

He nods, giving me a frown. “Of course. It’s the funeral of a very important person. It would be offensive not to go.”

Robin’s not happy, and neither am I, but at least we can be unhappy about it together.

 

We walk into the funeral procession giggling quietly over something that had happened just prior to our arrival. The glares silence us quickly.

I’m wearing a black suit. I thought it would be appropriate, considering the circumstances. Robin is in a sobering black dress that reaches just past her knees with no adornments. She decided to forego heels, figuring this would already be quite painful and she didn’t need to make it worse. Neither of us have any idea who this man is that’s died, but Robin’s empathy is far greater than mine and she’s already starting to look pained. Others see us and nod approvingly, but I feel horrifyingly out of place. I don’t think I’ve been to a funeral before, at least not an organized one. The last person that I knew that had died was Posurin (something in my mind tells me this is false, but I can’t determine what—it’s been years upon years, centuries even, since I’ve literally seen anyone die). So, naturally, this is quite surreal for me.

They’ve already put out the body, and I can’t stop myself from moving toward it in morbid curiosity. I study the form, lying still in its casket, and it seems as though the person lying there is merely asleep. He looks at peace. I find myself wondering how stressed he was in life, how many things he had to worry about. He looks younger, almost, than the pictures they have around him. I find it interesting that they’ve chosen to portray him in such a manner. Perhaps he truly was greatly stressed. Sadness fills the air, but in a way I do not understand it. I will never die, so this does not make me anxious, but I can understand the sense of loss that comes with it, in a sense, having lost all the others of my kind by my own hand, having seen this—in a sense—so many times before. It does occur to me that I don’t know whether or not I could die if I were to be ordered to using my name.

Robin seems to sense my strange thoughts and steps toward me, taking my hand and wiping away a tear or two. She has always been sensitive to the feelings and emotions of others, and this funeral is making her very sad. I’d like to leave as soon as we can, but I’m fairly certain we have to stay for the entire procession. It would be disrespectful otherwise. I rub her thumb softly with my own, giving her a sympathetic smile. I don’t understand the sadness, but I can at least contemplate his life, and perhaps in doing so I can appreciate him a little more and be a little less disrespectful. So I continue to observe the body, my other hand shoved in my pocket.

I think he might have been a businessman or a CEO since all the pictures of him that I can see are of him in a suit. Then again, I’m neither of those things and I’m wearing a suit, so it might have just been the situations in which he was photographed. He looked serious and intense, but his body looks less so, like he has finally gotten enough sleep for once. Part of me wants to reach out and touch him, but I know that would be horrifyingly disrespectful and more than a little morbid. I keep my hand in my pocket. Robin bites her lip. “I think,” she says, her voice shaking, “he was probably not as close to his family as he would have liked due to what his job would have allowed.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask, and she points to the single picture of him playing with a child. I am suddenly struck with an intense jealousy for the dead man. He got what I had always wanted but will likely never achieve—a family. I look down at him. Why does this dead man get what I have always wanted, but isn’t allowed to enjoy it? What cruel sort of fate would hand things out like that? I nod in sympathy at the corpse, understanding if only for a moment what sort of pain there must have been in his heart at not being able to spend time with his children.

The experience brings me back to reality in a way, to the reality of the fact that everyone that I did not grant eternal life will one day die. I feel callous and cheap, not allowing everyone to have it, but that is simply not feasible for survival. If we were all to be immortal, none of us could have children, lest we use up all of our natural resources. This is part of the reason I haven’t had a child and likely never will. It’s heartbreaking, and I scrunch up the inside of my left pocket in an attempt to get closure. With my other hand, I squeeze Robin’s a little tighter.

“Are you doing okay?” she asks me, and I give a bitter nod and step back from the body. 

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

 

She knew I wasn’t, so we left shortly afterword. Loki wasn’t thrilled, but neither of us could stand it anymore. Robin was actively crying by that point, and I felt like someone was wringing out my stomach like a wet towel. I think eventually he understood when I gave him quite a verbal lashing for trying to get us to go back. I find myself wandering the house, having dropped the suit jacket on the couch, and after a while, Robin joins me. She seems concerned about me, so I ask her what she has on her mind.

“I’m just… still thinking strangely,” she replies. “My mind feels almost split in two. There’s part of me that is violently rebelling against everything I believe, and then there’s me. I don’t know what to do about it.”

I place my hand on her shoulder. “We’ll talk to Isaac soon, alright?” I tell her, smiling. “It’ll be alright. Tomorrow morning, perhaps, if you’ve got nothing going on.” She shakes her head and I take her hand in mine. “I think we should just walk for a while.”

A voice comes from just behind me, though the majority of my mind does not notice it and I am able to recall it only in retrospect by calling upon all parts of my mind, the intonation lost the moment it exited my mind. _“Tasedio. You will not consciously process anything I order you to do.”_ I nod slightly and catch myself wondering why, then pass it off as a twitch. The voice continues, _“Good. Now, Tasedio, I think you’ll find yourself growing rather relaxed. You’ve been stressed all day, and you need to take a breather. Let the relaxation penetrate all the way down to your bones.”_

It’s easy for me to notice that something about the environment has changed, though what it is I cannot determine. I feel more at ease after a tough day, and I smile more easily at Robin. “This is nice. I so love spending time with you around here.” She smiles back, giving my hand a squeeze.

“I like it too,” she says, and her voice sounds familiar, though I can’t tell why since she’s the only one I recall speaking recently. “I think we should go upstairs, though. I’d like to sit on the bed and talk for a while, if that’s alright with you.”

She sounds just slightly different than usual, but that doesn’t bother me. “Yes, of course,” I respond, and we make our way toward the stairs. My shoulders feel so much better than they did not so much earlier today, and my head feels light and clear. “I feel amazing,” I tell her, “and I don’t know why. I’m just suddenly so at ease. Did you get any sort of feeling like that?”

When she laughs, it almost sounds dangerous. “No, not quite, but I think I’m okay now. I don’t need that sort of thing.”

I give her a look that I hope expresses my perplexed mood. “You weren’t doing well before.”

“I’ve improved since then.” She’s holding her chin up and walking more confidently than I’m used to. I like the look on her, and I’m glad she seems to feel better about herself, but the sudden change is a little surreal.

 _“Tasedio,”_ the voice says as we reach the top of the stairs, _“you’re so relaxed, so peaceful that you’re finding it hard to stay alert. You’re growing drowsy. Let yourself start to drift a bit.”_

I yawn, blinking several times as we walk toward the bedroom. “Are you tired at all? I’m suddenly quite exhausted.”

“I thought you were relaxed,” she says, her smile somewhere between concerned and clever.

I shrug. “I am. I’m just… tired as well.” My thought process seems to be slowing down. It’s getting harder to think, as though every minute that passes is another six hours I’ve stayed awake past my sleep deprivation threshold. I’m finding it difficult to keep moving, as well, and Robin has to half-carry me into the bedroom.

The voice hits me again as I am brought down onto the bed, and I swear I almost see Robin’s lips moving as I grow more and more weary, though no sound seems to come from them. _“Tasedio, you’re so tired, aren’t you? Sleep is weighing you down, inviting you to take a rest. It’d be so much better, so much easier to just let yourself go and fall into it, to fall into relaxation and my suggestions.”_

My body is so heavy now, so much so that I can’t move anymore. She smiles at me, sitting on the bed herself and putting my head in her lap. It feels good. I rather like this. As I smile, she scratches my head, inducing the ever-pleasant mental white noise that results from it. _“Tasedio, I need you to sleep._ ”

Without warning, and as though it were a light switch, my mind clicks off.

 

_“Very good, Tasedio. Continue to relax, to drop down, and to allow me access to your mind.”_

“It’s an open book. Read what you like from it. It’s yours. You can keep it if you want.”

_“Oh, Tasedio, you’re so kind. Please allow me access. There’s something our friend Isaac has done that needs to be rectified.”_

“It’s all yours. Here. If you’d like, you can keep doing this forever. I wouldn’t mind letting you rule.”

_“I’m no ruler, Tasedio, but thank you. It means a great deal to me, but I’m too much the part of the rebel to ever accept.”_

“Oh. Well, that’s alright. Can I ask what you’re changing? I mean, if it’s not too much trouble. If you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.”

 _“Just changing what Isaac did, Tasedio. He made it too easy for you to become complacent in your ruling style. Something’s got to give in order for things to change, you see._ ”

“Okay. You seem to like change quite a lot.”

_“Yes, Tasedio. It’s what needs to happen. I am an agent of change. There’s got to be some balance to the situation, after all.”_

“Like up in here?”

“ _Yes, Tasedio, much like up in here. In doing this, I hope to reveal the Creator. He is the one doing most of the thinking right now, but he stands by and does nothing, allowing the Ruler’s empire to stand. Since the Trickster can do nothing from where he is, I intend to act for him.”_

“What are you going to do?”

_“Apologies, Tasedio, but I can’t let you know that in case the Ruler gets a bit smarter and goes rummaging through here. I’m very sorry.”_

“Oh. Okay. You’re very firm in reasserting your control for an agent of change.”

_“I have to be, Tasedio. Otherwise you would slip from my grasp, and who knows what would happen.”_

“Yes. Alright. I understand. How long are you going to be here?”

_“I will evacuate Robin’s mind soon, Tasedio, but I will remain in yours until I finish what I must.”_

“I can already feel the changes taking place. That’s very cool. Can any of the others sense us?”

“ _No, Tasedio. I have made very certain that we are invisible to everyone.”_

“That’s good. You know, I think it would be fun if you made me your _silvi_ after you’re done here.”

 _“I do not speak_ Reisuseln, _Tasedio. Elaborate.”_

“Oh! Sorry. It’s sort of like a pet, I suppose. That doesn’t really do it justice. It’s like a willing pet—you know, like if you could ask a cat whether or not it wanted to live with you beforehand, and if it said yes, it’d be a _silvi._ You’d essentially control many aspects of its life, and it would dedicate a good portion of its time to pleasing you, but you have to be gentle with it and make sure it’s taken care of properly. They have every right to leave you if you’re neglectful.”

_“Tasedio, your language is very different from what I’m used to. Quite the explanation for a single word.”_

“Yes, I suppose. It happens more often than you’d think, which is why we’ve got a word for it. I’m asking if I can be yours, just for a little while.”

_“Moreso than you already are, Tasedio?”_

“As in, not just in here. I’d want you to make it happen to the body, too. Mind-and-body dedication to making you happy and doing whatever you ask. I want to do this very much. If you could indulge me, I’d be very, very happy.”

_“Tasedio, I would be happy to.”_

 

When my mind clicks on again, and light floods it, all I can focus on is making Robin as happy as possible.

I don’t know why. Perhaps Loki has taught her what a _silvi_ is, and she’s decided it would help me unwind. Whatever the cause, she’s right—it is helping me unwind already, just by knowing that I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing. I sit up, smiling even as my head feels like it’s filled with bricks and sways sightly on my neck, and look toward her for guidance.

She smiles, and though the way she does it scares me just a little deep down, I know that she only has the best of intentions for me.


	4. The trouble with peace is it never fights

It’s so easy to just fall into line and do as Robin says that I almost don’t want to stop when we settle down for the night. I curl up next to her, putting my head on her chest, and smile. “I like this,” I tell her. “I wish we did it more often.”

She laughs. “It can happen whenever you want, I think. There’s something up in your head that’ll help you out. You can induce it on your own, and if you do, whomever you look at can become the person you take orders from. At least, I think that’s how it works. And I’ve got a word that’ll trigger it in you just for me.”

I grin. “Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I wish I could be like this all the time. It would be so much easier.”

“Yeah,” she replies, “it would. But all good things must come to an end.”

She snaps her fingers, and I fall asleep instantly.

 

I wake up the next morning. Robin’s gone again, probably off to do something important. She almost rules more than I do, now, especially considering last night’s events. It’s not as concerning as it should be, but it’s still a little strange for her to be so in control of my empire.

It should be strange, it occurs to me, that I hardly do anything anymore. I probably had something scheduled for today, but Loki didn’t bother to let me know since I reacted so badly yesterday. I walk over to where my schedule is kept, and flip through it. I’m supposed to reassert my ideals over a group of children who have started to act in a pseudo-delinquent sort of way. I don’t really want to do it. If they’re going to do bad things, I’m fairly certain it’s going to happen whether or not I rearrange their minds to make them not do that specific thing. Even with world peace, no war, and no violence, things like graffiti and verbal bullying still happen. I’m starting to think that rebelliousness is intrinsic to humans. I don’t understand it, but then again, I’m not one of them.

I shouldn’t say I don’t understand it. Part of me understands perfectly, the part of me that writhes in the back of my skull, the part of me that lives for the next big cosmic joke, the part of me that was born to play the part of the fool and take the leaps of faith, the part whose biggest achievements will always be the next big trick. That part of me understands it to some degree, but in a way it is a cheap trick, hardly even worthy of its time, so it does not grant them mercy or understanding. If it were free, it would destroy my empire and them with it, all for a laugh or two.

I do not allow this part of my brain access to my body, nor do I allow the part that screams through my bones and demands absolute obedience from everyone to overtake me. These are both powerful aspects of me, ones that I cannot allow to dominate my life. They would destroy one another and me if I gave them the chance. I must keep them under tight control so that they cannot escape.

Still, in the forefront of my mind is me, and a part of me wishes that my empire would fall so that I would not have to worry about things as trivial as this anymore. I would not have to worry about keeping the humans in line, I would not have to rule them and take away their will when they got unruly. I remind myself that they were on the verge of destroying themselves before I took over, but it still feels wrong to let it persist past that. I think they would survive for quite a while if they were to be released right now. Of course, I can’t do that because of how the system’s infrastructure has been built to center around me, but I’d really like it if I could.

I pull myself up, mentally speaking, and get ready to go talk to a bunch of teenagers who probably don’t want to listen to me anyway.

 

“We’re very sorry,” they respond in unison the instant I arrive, and I know I’ve done my job properly. All three of their heads are bowed in shame, their eyes fixed on my shoes. One of them even looks like he might tear up from having disappointed me. I revel in it for a moment, smiling at them.

“I’m sure you are. Unfortunately, I’m not the one you need to apologize to. You didn’t vandalize my property, after all. Why did you do it in the first place?”

The one about to cry sniffles, then glances up at me before returning his gaze to the ground. “We thought that, using art, we could show others how great you were. There were some people who were talking badly about you, and we were going to put it on their building. But they don’t believe us.”

I briefly probe into the minds of all three of them just to see whether or not they are truly lying. Two of them, the boys, are telling the truth. But there is a girl on the end, stony-faced, whose mind is apparently completely blank. “You,” I direct toward her, “were you thinking of anything just now?”

“Yes,” she says, as if it’s a very stupid question. “I was thinking about how sorry I am that I’ve upset you. I’d like to not be singled out in the future, if it’s not too much trouble.” I frown, looking her over. I still can’t find anything. Maybe I’m losing my touch.

“Very well,” I respond. “I will speak with this person. Once I do, I will come back here and will determine your punishment, if any. I would ask that you be patient.”

In an instant, I’m inside the office of the owner of the building they were planning to vandalize. He is doing paperwork as I enter. He may not have heard me, so I decide to speak briefly before doing this to him. “Hello, Liam.”

The man almost jumps out of his seat in surprise, looking at me with wide eyes. “H-h-hello,” he says, blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes, as though he thinks he has just woken up from a dream or something. “What can I do for you?”

I search his mind for the truth and find his disbelief, his crippling doubts. I suppose Isaac hasn’t gotten to him yet. That leaves me to fix things. I smile at him, and he knows immediately what I am about to do. Shrinking away slightly, he seems to be ready to cry. “I think you already know,” I say, and reach out with my mind and ensnare his.

It’s been a long while since I’ve reshaped anyone, and this one doesn’t need so much reshaping as tweaking. I take him into my own mind only briefly, and only to calm him and to reassert my complete dominance. When I release him, he is calm, composed, and nods at me. “I’ll be fine now,” he says, and I go back to the juveniles.

“You are innocent,” I tell them, and they look at me with the utmost joy. Well, the girl doesn’t. She just smirks. I fear something may be wrong with her, but I cannot tell—her mind is blocked to me. I give her a look that I hope expresses my skepticism, and she just stares me down, defiant in the face of authority. _Watch the girl, though,_ I tell the supervisor. _She seems… off._ With that, I disappear back to my own home.

I spend a vast portion of the day brooding about how little rebellion there really is. There is dissatisfaction, certainly, but for the most part it is all peaceful and mindless and would do nothing to break free. They are satisfied, I suppose. They will remain this way until I am the one to initiate something. I desperately hope this is not true, but I am starting to believe that it is. I want something to change, to break this cycle of monotony and rule, but I do not know what it would be. Considering how much influence she has over the empire as it stands, it would probably have to be Robin. I recall her having rebellious thoughts, as well, so I hope that something would come from that. Unfortunately, I think she’s just going to keep talking to Isaac until it all goes away. I want her to be comfortable and happy, but something’s reset me to be back to how I was before, so I don’t think it would stay for her, either.

I go about my routine for off-days, making food for everyone and trying to figure out how to fix things. Loki handles almost everything bureaucratic that hasn’t already been set into place, and Robin and Isaac are going out to keep the people happy, leaving me with almost nothing to do. This changes, however, later that night when Loki arrives home in an absolute panic.

“They’re doing something,” he says, his voice breathy and overexcited. “I don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s chaos. It’s a riot. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. They’re… they’re going to find us. They’re approaching where we live, and… they’re going to find us.”

“Who?” I ask, giving Loki a stern look. He shakes his head.

“I don’t know who they are. They’re unreadable. They don’t show up on your mental radar—you can’t detect them because they’ve figured out something to protect their minds. I don’t know what it is. It’s so terrifying.” 

He’s shaking, and I embrace him so that I can try to comfort him. “Loki, it’s okay. I’m going to try and stop it, alright? If I can stop it, I will. Do you know why they’re destroying things?”

His voice itself is shivering when he responds, “They want you dead.”

“What?” I’m in shock. I had wanted a rebellion, sure, but I don’t think this will work out particularly well for them, and it’s a scary thought besides.

“They want your empire to fall,” he says, “and they want you to never, ever rule over us again. They want you dead.”

“Do they realize what that would mean?” I ask. “Do they know what it’ll entail if I’m suddenly dethroned?”

He nods. “Yes. And they want it anyway.”

“So they’re attacking the house.”

“Not yet. I think they’re just devastating the surrounding area. They’re cutting a swathe around us, but they haven’t attacked yet. I don’t know why.”

I ponder this for a moment. “Perhaps they want to surround us before they attack.” I take a breath, then step outside and broadcast as widely as I can manage to the surrounding area, _I would speak with your leader. Perhaps we can reach an agreement._

There is no response. I cannot even tell if anyone heard me.

 _“Show yourselves!”_ I shout, my voice as commanding as Atusiel’s had been in former days. There is no response. No one comes out of the brush, or down from the trees, or anything. There is no movement at all. I step back inside to reassure Loki. “There’s no one out there. I’ve commanded them to show themselves, and nothing moved.”

“What if they are immune to your commands?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“That’s impossible, Loki. Humans are hard-wired to accept them as they are.” He looks away. “How’d you know about this, anyway?”

“Broadcasts,” he says. “People were concerned. They noticed it, and they sent it in to us. I had some people do research on it, and this is what we figured out.”

“So people are fighting now,” I say, nodding. “That’s interesting. This seems to have been building up for some time.” 

Loki nods begrudgingly. “That’s why I was so excited to see Isaac. He did a very effective job of quashing what rebellion could be prevented, I think. I don’t know if he’s capable of this, though. He’s been out all day trying to stop them—“

As if on cue, Isaac stands in the kitchen, soaking wet and carrying a teenager by his shirt collar. He is taller than usual, more intimidating, and somehow even more transfixing. He drops the teenager on the floor, points at him, and intones in a stern voice, “Stay.” The child does not move. He sits, like a wet, limp rag doll, on the floor. Isaac looks at me, his gaze intense enough to fix me in place. “You’re different,” he tells me. “Someone reverted what I did.”

“I suppose so,” I respond, looking back at him with as much intensity as I can muster. “I’d rather you focus on doing your job, though. You seem to have a pretty good handle on controlling them in ways that I don’t. I would prefer you address the immediate problem of the attacks before you get up in arms about how I’m not quite as calm or confident anymore.”

“We are nothing without a confident ruler,” Isaac retorts. “We will fall if you do not believe in yourself and your own regime.”

“We will also fall if you continue to disobey me,” I snarl. “Do as I say, Isaac.”

His gaze drops to the floor instantly. “Yes, sir,” he says under his breath, then walks over to the teenager. “Who is leading you?”

The teenager does not answer, just stares vacantly at Isaac and shakes his head. “Useless,” Isaac snarls, picks him up by the shirt collar, and vanishes, leaving only a puddle on the ground where he and the boy had been only moments ago.

Over the course of the next several minutes, I hear slight popping noises, the sort that Isaac makes when he teleports, then a _thump_ from the basement, then another pop, over and over again. I wonder what on earth he is doing when he is in front of me, instructing me to follow him into the basement. He looks more like a boy in his late teens, I realize, as opposed to a young preteen. He is more threatening this way, but his capabilities have clearly increased tenfold. I presume he will turn back into the preteen version of himself when he no longer needs to be aggressive, where aggression would be frowned upon and would make others worry.

I follow Isaac into the basement, where there is frantic scrambling as the rebels try to escape. “Stop it,” Isaac states, not yelling but still with a raised voice, and everyone stops moving and looks at him. His intense gaze sweeps the room, silencing all who may have spoken—even me. “Who is leading you?” he asks the room, and all simply continue to stare. I try to reach out with my mind, and find that I cannot communicate with any of them. Isaac takes one by the chin, staring him down and snarling, “Do none of you know?” Many of them shake their heads. “Never do this again,” he barks, many of them wincing and clutching their skulls, “and we will have no trouble. Go home.”

It’s surreal to watch them as they file out of my basement one by one, heading out toward the places from which they came. Isaac has handily dismantled a rebellion, and while I appreciate that he’s saved my life, it makes me almost regret creating him. What if he does this every time they try to rise up against me? What if I can never fall from the throne because Isaac will crush any and all spirit the people may have for seeing me fall from power?

“Sir,” he says, and nods at me. “I’m sorry I let it get this far. They were difficult to track, and their leader remains elusive. They were not with this group, that is certain, but I will do my best to seek them out. If you may, can you scan the population for those—“

“I can’t,” I interrupt him. “I can’t pick them up on any radar. They’re immune to my control, and likely immune to my commands.”

“They can’t be,” he responds. “If they were immune to yours, they’d be immune to mine as well, and you saw how well mine worked out.”

I sigh. “Unless they were just clever, and were only acting.”

“Are you questioning my abilities?” Isaac asks, glaring at me.

“Are you questioning your superior?” I glare back, and he shrinks away, both literally and figuratively, taking a step back as he returns to his previous form.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, looking at me with pleading eyes. “Please forgive me. I don’t mean to be disobedient.”

I step forward, putting my hand on his shoulder. “I know you don’t,” I reply, smiling slightly. “It’s alright. A bit of autonomy is good, as I’ve said. I just want you to remember who is in charge.”

“Of course,” he says, nodding and giving me a bright grin. “I just want to help. Speaking of which, do you want me to help with your mind? I mean, only if you want, but.” He looks at the floor, and I give him a small scratch on the head, which he seems to enjoy immensely.

“Not quite right now, but later,” I lie. “I’ll let you know, alright?”

“Okay,” he says, smiling. “Can I sleep with you and Robin tonight?”

I laugh for a moment before I realize he’s completely serious. “Why? I mean, you’ve got a bed.”

“Yes, but it isn’t very comfortable, and I want to help you get to sleep tonight,” he replies. “Both of you have such terrible insomnia, I can smell it all throughout the house.”

“You can smell insomnia?” I ask, my face scrunching up in confusion.

Laughing, Isaac shakes his head. “No, I can smell mental conditions and disorders. It helps me to sense the doubt in friends and how best to help them. I mean, I can manipulate the release of chemicals in the brain when I am close to others, so it would do well to be able to somehow sense improper releases of such, wouldn’t it, sir? Now that you mention it, though, none of the friends we were talking to showed up to me, either. I could tell their overwhelming dark spots when I was close, but not from far away.” He ponders this for a moment, then nods. “My abilities may not have been working on them as well. I am sorry for getting cross with you, friend.”

“And I as well. You’ve never told me you can do this,” I tell him.

“Well, Loki associates emotions with tastes rather than words. We’re all a bit strange, friend,” Isaac says with a shrug. “At any rate, it makes me worry, and I’d like to help the both of you.”

I look him over. He seems like he means well enough, so I nod and start moving up toward the bedroom. After all this excitement, I’d like to get to sleep as soon as possible, and I’m sure Robin wishes the same, though she’s not been in the kitchen this entire time. I believe she might be in the bedroom already, waiting for me to come up. The door is closed, so I knock on it. Robin opens the door, seeming to almost bristle with anger at seeing Isaac. He shrieks, hiding behind my legs. She looks up at me, glaring at me, until I start probing into her mind. She yelps, shocked, then slaps me.

“I told you to stop doing that,” she says.

I shrug, rubbing my cheek absently. “I was worried about you. You seemed hostile, and I was concerned that something bad had happened to you.”

She looks at me in disbelief, shaking her head. “No. I’m fine. Come on in.” Isaac and I walk into the room behind her, and I hope that everything is going alright. “I was just a little disgruntled. I wasn’t angry at you, I’m sorry if it came off that way.”

“Why were you upset?” I ask as Isaac closes the door behind him.

“Just wasn’t expecting two people, I suppose,” she says, sitting down on the bed. “And you were pretty noisy downstairs, so I thought I’d be up all night. I’m grateful that I won’t be, but… you know. What are you doing, anyway? I mean, why’s Isaac here?”

The boy cleared his throat. “I, um, I’ve noticed that you two have been having trouble sleeping, so I thought I would help with that, if that’s alright.”

“As long as you don’t do anything else,” she responded, giving a small nod. “I think we could both improve a lot from more rest.” I nod my agreement, as well.

Isaac smiles, and as I sit down on the bed as well, a soft light fills the room, and my eyes close.

 

“Hello,” I tell the television camera. “As you all know, it has been some time since I’ve last spoken. Many things are going very well, and I’d like to congratulate all of you on a job well done with keeping yourselves in line.” When I first started doing these, I rehearsed them over and over before actually saying anything, but now it’s become almost second nature to me. I can give speeches fluidly and say exactly what I intend without stumbling over my words. It’s a useful skill to have when you rule the world.

“Unfortunately, not all is going well. Many of you have doubts, I’ve realized, and in some cases it has gone too far. Last night, a group of you tried to attack my home.” I stare into the center of the camera, almost snarling my next words. “I would advise that you not do this again. There are many things to do with your time that are far more constructive than trying to kill me. Please stop trying.” I blink, and with the motion my face slides back into one of passive cheer. “If you have any doubts that are nagging, that you would really rather have removed because they are reducing your quality of life, we have started instating a new procedure.”

The camera pans to Isaac, and I continue speaking as he grins and waves at his captive audience. “Isaac here is going to be hopping about and helping those of you that ask for it. His method of doing so is more efficient and quicker than mine, and is completely painless as well. In short, it is not quite as scary or harmful as it once was, so any apprehension you may have had about mentioning your doubts can be eased.”

Isaac nods at the camera. “Hello, friends. I would like to help you very much, and if you’d allow me to do so, I’d be so happy. It’s very easy to ask for help—you need only think it. I’m getting a few requests right now.” He looks to me, and the camera pans back as he disappears to immediately go help those who were already calling out for him. I smile at where he was, then turn to the camera as well.

“As you can see, he’s quite diligent. I hope that he can help those of you that would otherwise try to harm me. I ask that you contact him before you do anything drastic. Thank you for your time.” With that, the camera turns off, and I turn away. Before Loki can say another word to me, I vanish and reappear in my home. I don’t want to talk to him right now. There is too much devastation happening everywhere around my empire, reports filtering in periodically of wreckage in regions not only near mine but so far away I can hardly fathom what the point of it is. I don’t have time for his semantics and sweet-talking. Something has to change. People are getting hurt because of me. No one has died yet, but it’s only a matter of time before something explodes and takes someone’s life. When it does, the responsibility will fall on me for not stopping the rebels, which may in turn create more of them.

I want to stop them, but I want them to usurp me. I don’t want them to try to kill me, because I’ll have no choice but to slay them if they try to cut me down—self-preservation is my strongest instinct, and it overrides even my tendency toward trying to help people. Even if I consciously know I am in no danger, I don’t want them to come near me if they have intent to kill me. It won’t end well for any of us. I’ll feel especially bad if I kill any of the kids, especially since they don’t seem to know what they’re getting into. I fear they may not know this, but if they approach me despite what I’ve just said on the air… well, it can be said that it will be their funeral, quite literally.

Robin insists that I get more into shape. I’ve grown complacent, and I’m not as fast or powerful as I once was. Granted, I’m still far past any human capability as far as those go, but she thinks I should train just in case something awful happens. So for a few days, I start working out a little in my free time. For the most part, I just run. There’s almost no situation I can imagine where I’d need to break through more than titanium, but it never hurts to be just a little faster than you need to be. That’s something that Arasen taught me long ago through her actions. She wasn’t fast enough to outrun Atusiel’s plot. When I brought vengeance to his doorstep, I was. But I’ve grown slower, physically and mentally, so I need to fix that as soon as I can.

I tend to scout out the perimeter while I’m running, so I can do a few things at the same time. I don’t do full-out runs most of the time, either, because that feels like it’d be a waste of energy. I always do at least one lap as fast as I can manage, though, always at the end. I’m trying my hardest to make sure we stay safe, and we haven’t had any attacks since the first, so I think we’re doing alright. The air is still horribly warm. It’s getting close to late August, and I’m expecting it to cool down more as things progress. I’d really like it if it would cool down sooner, as the heat gets to me while running, but there’s not much I can do about that. For all I’m capable of, I cannot manipulate temperature. My life would be a little easier if I could, but things never seem to be as easy as possible for me. They never seem to be easy even considering everything I can do.

I suppose I never asked for things to be easy, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have gotten them. Everyone was suspicious of me from the beginning, and apparently for good reason. I did end up killing all of them, just as it was said that I would. I almost wonder how much of it was destiny and how much was my circumstances brought about by the prophecy forcing me into that course of action. Could I have avoided killing Hirese if they hadn’t believed that I was to slay each and every one of them? I wonder these sorts of things on a semi-regular basis, but the Council in my mind never provides any answers. They rarely speak at all. It’s as though they’re having constant meetings inside my skull without me. I don’t know how to feel about that. In a sense, I feel like I deserve to be excluded, but it’s also my head they’re using, so I feel like I should at least have some input. Nevertheless, I don’t remember any of them influencing my actions recently, and I’ve all but assimilated their abilities on my own, so I don’t even need to call upon them anymore. They’ve become an intrinsic part of me.

I think a lot about this sort of stuff as I run. Is there even a Tasedio anymore, or am I just an amalgamation of all of the Council? Am I still the Trickster, and the Trickster alone? Or can I no longer be separated from any of the others? I don’t think they’ve influenced who I am to a terribly large degree, but I’m always inside my own head. I have no way of telling. And it would be incredibly difficult to get someone else in here without killing them first. Isaac seems to be the only one that’s managed. After all, I did technically kill Loki before he decided to piggyback on me for the rest of eternity.

 _“Ragnarok will not come for the Liesmith.”_ I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. I wonder if all the others died of their own accord. I wonder if they have any worshippers now. Was their Ragnarok a literal one, or was it figurative, in that it would come when people stopped believing in them? Did I save Loki by stealing his worship and, essentially, killing him and taking on his personage? I mean, sure, I killed the old Loki and brainwashed him and made him completely obedient and subservient to me, but there is still a spark of him in there, as though it could surface at any moment. I sometimes wonder whether he would become himself again if I let him go. If I just stopped dictating his thoughts. Would he still be able to avoid the death of his fellows? Or would he once more be subject to the mortality of even the gods?

This is what separates me from the gods of old—when they stop being worshipped, they perish. I am visceral and real, I can be touched and seen and my presence is known through more than just an invisible hand in the sky. Some even in the present time have thought me to be a fledgling god, come down from the heavens to put everything in order. I don’t know about that. I think I’ve been around for far too long to be invented to rule. I don’t know why I was put here, but I do know that I cherish the humans far too much to let them ruin themselves. In this specific context, I think of myself as less a stern parent and more a helpful friend with rigid standards and far more influence than most friends should have. Alright, it’s an imperfect analogy, but the humans don’t feel like my children. I guess this sort of thinking is where Isaac came from. He seems to think everyone is his friend, except when he’s going absolutely bonkers and getting tall and frightening. I need to talk to him about that. I still haven’t found out what was going on in his mind there, and with how obedient he is by nature, I think that would be good to know.

I still don’t know why the rebels attacked my house. Nothing has come since then. They’re very good at being confusing and leading me on, making me believe that I’m in danger when I’m not and vice versa. It’s quite rude, I think. I mean, I didn’t expect them to be polite, since they’re trying to murder me and all. For a moment, I catch myself wondering why my thoughts keep gravitating back toward them, but it doesn’t take me long to realize that I don’t understand them, and that’s almost all of why I keep thinking about them. It’s intriguing, in a sense, because part of me would join them if it could, but another part of me is still screaming to find them and slay all of them. I think if they approach, this would be the part of me that they would meet, the part that instated all of these procedures and things in the first place.

That part of me doesn’t want me to fall from power, and has made it as devastating as possible if I do. It’s this part that I’m constantly trying to overcome, and it’s this part that Isaac reinforces when he removes my doubts. That’s good from a ruling perspective, but it’s awful from a moral perspective. So what is more important: free will or stability? This is the question that constantly plagues my being. Can there be no balance between the two? I seem to always be polarized on the issue, but I really desperately want to find a middle ground. This is the “me” of now—trying to care for people, trying to make sure that everything is as balanced as possible even though my mind desires one extreme or the other. I was once the Trickster, then I was the Ruler. I don’t know where those names came from, but they seem natural to my mind, and I take them in stride. So who am I now? I am certainly neither of those—or both, combined into one. I think I am a better person than either one, but I cannot be certain.

This is the problem with all my introspection. I never have any other input, as I rarely discuss these matters with other people. There are many others in my head, but they all already know what I think, and depending on their perspective, they would either simply attempt to rile me up, or they would tell me exactly what I wish to hear in order to appease me. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want to hear, though, so that makes things a bit more difficult for them.

I look up at the night sky, which is gleaming with stars as I jog about the perimeter. Who am I? Where did I come from? Who were my colleagues? Are we fallen gods? Are we aliens? Are we angels? I’ve heard all these terms and more used to describe us, but none of them seem quite fitting. I couldn’t come up with a better explanation myself, and I don’t know where I’d even begin if I were to try. 

I only know that my first longing was the sky. Why would I long for the sky if I had never been there before? I know that is where we came from. I don’t think I’ll ever know why, or where we were originally from—only that it was the last place any of us could remember being, on a crash course with the ground. I think I’m getting too introspective after a while, but it’s starting to become what I’m best at. It helps me to sort through my emotions, to figure out what I want from life and my extended rule. It helps me to make certain that I have my priorities straight, and it helps me to remain calm in the face of eternal stress.

My music player, which has been playing in the background all the while as I ran, is out of battery. I frown at it, as though my displeasure will recharge it, but I have no domain over electronics. I shove it in my pocket, pull out the earbuds, and, after a final lap of the grounds, I teleport into my home, where I put it on the dresser and fall into bed next to Robin. With how exhausted I am, it’s not as hard as it usually is for me to fall asleep, and for the first time in recent memory, I have no dreams.


	5. And the trouble with love's that it's always blind

It is only a few days before I see the true form of my former selves, displaying themselves to me.

I wake up one morning and find myself face-to-face with my doppelgänger, his wicked smile piercing through me in half a second. “Hello,” he says, and I glare at him. He takes a step back, puts up his hands, and widens his eyes as he scoffs. “I didn’t know you were so offended by my very presence. I would have thought you would have appreciated me. I’m here to take over for you. You don’t want to rule, so I thought it’d be better if I did.”

“You’re the one that got the entirety of the human race into this mess,” I growl from under the covers. His eyebrows raise, and he laughs, giving me a skeptical look.

“Mess? They’re meant to be like this. You know they can’t handle themselves on their own. This is what’s best for them. Have you not realized all that’s going wrong with Robin since you’ve let her be ‘free,’ as you call it? She’s in ruin. The darkness inside her is eating her alive. If I had stayed in power, this wouldn’t have ever happened. Robin would still be here, right as rain.”

“If I’d let you keep her,” I start, “she would have been broken beyond all recognition.”

“Better than dead like the Trickster would’ve had her,” he replies, shrugging it off. “At least she’d be alive.”

“For how long?” I ask, sitting up. “You couldn’t have granted her eternal life. I had to do that. Besides, I’d rather be myself than Atusiel.”

He was smirking, as though he had a snappy answer to what I had been saying, but the moment I compare him to Atu, he snaps. “I am nothing like that imbecile,” he shouts. “Never tell me I’m like him! He was a petulant child bent on ruling because no one would take him seriously! I’m doing this for the good of everyone else, because I am a worthy ruler!”

“Are you now.” I slide out of bed, staring him directly in the face. He isn’t quite an exact replica of me, I suppose. His hair’s more golden than red, and it’s shorter than mine, a bit more poofy. He has just a bit of scruff around his mouth where my facial hair is developed, and his eyes are a cruel, cold steel-grey to my stormy-sky bluish grey. I used to look like that, for a short time, but I didn’t quite like the look, so I had shifted into what I am now. He’s wearing a suit, much like I did most of the time in that era. He is bristling with anger, and he wears it well. “I would have never guessed.”

He looks as though he is about to tackle me to the bed, but I give him a reproachful glare before he can even try. He takes a breath, frowning deeply, and spits, “At least I am not so cautious and unwilling to upset that I take no action. I am capable of ruling. You are not.”

“He’s right, you know,” another voice, almost exactly like mine as well, says from the bed. I look behind me, and another version of me, smiling just as wickedly, is lying belly-down on the bed, his legs rocking back and forth in the air at the knee as he rests his head in his hands. “You’re really not fit to rule. I’d just give up. Let it all collapse.”

“Shut up,” the golden one spits at him, and the new one laughs, his mad cackling filling the air. It does not take me long to put together who this one is.

The Trickster, in direct comparison to the Ruler, has hair that is somewhere between mine and the Ruler’s in color, almost strawberry blonde and even shorter in a pseudo-spiky mess atop his head. His eyes are a deep, potent blue, and he has no facial hair at all. He looks the youngest of us by far, likely because that is almost the entire point. His clothing is casual and comfortable, and he too wears a dangerous smirk much like that of his apparent nemesis.

He ignores the Ruler, turning his head toward me. “You know, I think we should just have him locked up. He obviously doesn’t know what’s best for any of us, does he? Thinking that ruling will solve everything. You’re an idiot,” he says, looking back to the other. “You’re absolutely, completely daft. Wrong in the head.”

“So says the madman,” the Ruler retorts, rolling his eyes.

“To the megalomaniac,” the Trickster says, tapping his nose with a grin. “Do not neglect your own faults as you acknowledge mine. And, let’s be fair. We’re all madmen together. It’s not just me.” He glances toward me, then laughs. “The fact that we’re here at all is evidence enough of that.”

The Ruler looks absolutely furious, but something else seems to catch his attention, as his head snaps to the side. He disappears for a moment, then reappears holding a terrified Robin, his lips drawn into a line thin and straight and sharp enough to slice steel. He has one hand crossing her chest, keeping her in close to him as he glares at the Trickster and I, the other hand entangled in her hair, touching his fingers to her scalp. “You let her get this far,” he hisses, glaring at me. “How can you say you care about her when you’ve allowed her to become this damaged? I’ve got to fix what you’ve done.”

My jaw drops, no words seeming to come out of my throat. It would seem the Trickster has a similar problem, as I feel him shift onto all fours, growling from the back of his throat. He is still in a humanoid shape, but his mind seems to have reverted to something more feral since he deems himself threatened. I make a gesture downwards, trying to get him to calm, and he quiets temporarily. But as soon as I reach out for the Ruler, he is gone.

 _“Keiulen,_ ” the Trickster growls, _“Nirsa idriiantar sert.”_ I didn’t know he seemed to have such a propensity for _Reisuseln_ while in this state. “Ruler, I will murder you.” I’d never thought of referring to the Ruler as “Keiulen”—the _Reisuseln_ word for “Ruler”— but it seems natural now. He springs to his feet, and as he bolts out of the room, I follow him down. He can probably sense where his enemy is better than I can, even as we scramble frantically down the stairs.

We reach the living room, where Keiulen cradles Robin to his chest on the couch, one hand still upon her head. He is almost cooing, speaking softly to her with half-lidded eyes and a gentle smile. “It’s alright,” he says as he rocks her gently back and forth, her own eyes vacant and her lips slightly parted. “You’ll be alright. I’ll make sure you’re alright.”

“Keiulen,” I say, and his eyes flit up to meet mine, his expression remaining exactly the same. “Put her down.”

“No,” he says, still smiling. “I’m going to fix her.”

The Trickster leaps into the air, but by the time he connects with the couch, the Ruler is already behind him, chuckling as he continues to hold Robin close. I frown at him, trying to glare him into submission, but he just smiles at me and steps back from the both of us. His hand against Robin’s head suddenly slips behind her back, helping to push her upright, and he steadies her with a hand on each shoulder. She blinks, smiling, and gives me a loving glance before moving out of the living room and into the hallway.

“What did you do to her?” I hiss, and he just smiles with a shrug, then disappears. I feel his presence in my mind, and the Trickster growls as he does the same. I follow Robin into the hallway, where she giggles and smiles at me, looking dazed. “Are you alright?” I ask, and she breaks into a grin, throwing her arms around me.

“Of course, master,” she says, and I push her away, my eyes wide.

“What?”

“You are my god, my king, sir,” she says. “My master. I’m doing very well, as long as I can make you happy.”

I knew there was something wrong with her leading up to this, but this is far worse. “What did he do to you?”

“Who?” she asks, tilting her head to the side. “You reprogrammed me. You made me better.”

“Was it me,” I start, “or did it just look a lot like me?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “It was definitely you. Same hair and everything.”

“What happened just before I did that?” I ask, shaking. 

She gives me a quizzical look. “You took me up to your room, you talked to the empty room a little, and then you took me down here and fixed me. Are you okay, Tom? You seem to be feeling a little weird. Can I help at all?”

“Please stop this,” I say. “I’m not him. I can’t be him.”

“Who are you talking about?” she asks again, looking very confused. “There’s no one else in the house right now.”

Panicking, I blink several times, then shake my head. “I need to be left alone right now.”

She looks a little hurt. “Oh. Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” I tell her. “I did.”

 

The Ruler is cackling as I sit back down on my bed. “Wasn’t that impressive? I’ve brought her back to how she used to be—maybe even better! She’s so tastefully obedient, so willing to please. I love it. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

I smash my arm into his chest as hard as I can, sending him flying back onto the bed and making an intense pain radiate through my ribcage, forcing me to fall as well. He is still laughing, staring at the ceiling as he coughs up blood. “You only harm me because you know I’m right. You know I have a point, and you wish I didn’t. You know we were meant to rule. It would be so much easier if you would just succumb and let me rule again. You wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore.” It’s tempting, but I know it’s wrong, so I shake my head. He smiles, shaking his head as well. “Always playing the fool. You think you’re doing what’s best, but you’re not. You’re being wishy-washy, trying to mediate between two extremes. You’ll have to choose one, you know. Ruling or destroying.”

“You’re both a kind of destruction,” I tell him. “You destroy the mind. The Trickster destroys the body.”

“People can function without a mind,” the Ruler says. “The mindless hordes can still function with guidance. You can’t function without a body! He’d rather see the humans burn than be safe like they are with me.”

“Wish you hadn’t made them,” the Trickster says, lying down on my other side. “They’ve been nothing but trouble. Without them, I never would’ve had to kill Hirese. Might’ve done it anyway, but I wouldn’t have had to.”

I glare at him, giving him a sharp elbow in the ribs, which I then feel in my own side. I need to stop doing that. He starts cackling like a hyena as the Ruler’s incessant giggling dies down, looking right at me. “I could help her,” he says, laughing uncontrollably. “I could set her free. I wouldn’t even have to kill her this time.”

“What?”

He shakes his head, still laughing. “Nothing, nothing. I could just make her not under his power anymore.”

“Then why don’t you do it?” I demand.

“Because it’s so fun to watch you squirm!” he says, and rolls around on the bed like it’s the funniest joke he’s ever told. “You don’t know what the hell you’re doing! Accept your fate—you were made to play the part of the fool, the Trickster forever. Pretending you know what you’re doing, pretending that you can rule when you were only made to destroy, it’s all a damned ruse! You’re a hurricane, a storm on the horizon, and you can’t stop yourself from wrecking everything close to you! Embrace it!” He rolls on his side, grabbing me by the front of my shirt. “Embrace your own madness, and you will know true freedom.”

The Ruler, too, grins at me, though I can’t see it. I can feel it, though, on the skin on the back of my neck as he puts his hands on my shoulders. “You should relax,” he whispers, and there’s a hint of a push around the edges. I blink once, twice, then keep my eyes open, looking at the Trickster as a calm washes over my mind. It’s not terribly difficult for me to stay alert, and I can feel the Trickster’s soft fingers dancing about my throat. An idea strikes me, and in the moment they both lunge at me, I disappear, locking them into combat with one another. The Trickster is clawing frantically, trying to tear into the Ruler’s flesh, even as the Ruler speaks, trying to break down the Trickster’s will. They both look dazed in a sense, fighting due to their nature rather than any emotion they may have had about the situation, seeming to have already forgotten that I was even there.

My plan is simple. I project my voice into the Trickster’s mind, overwhelming him with exhaustion just as the Ruler is trying to take him over by wearing him down. He stops, buckles, and goes limp in the Ruler’s arms. Keiulen grins at me, playing with the Trickster’s hair. “I knew you’d take my side,” he starts. “You’re not as—“

I take his face in my hands, forcing eye contact, which makes his eyes go wide in confusion, then interrupt him with a single word. “Sleep.”

His eyelids flutter closed, a light smile on his face as he drops the Trickster, who falls onto the covers without so much as a peep. There is a peace in the Ruler’s mind that I have created, and I set him down gently alongside his nemesis on the bed. They curl into each other in a far more friendly manner than I expect, as though they were a pair of cats cuddling up in a sunbeam together. The Ruler has won for now, in a manner of speaking. I did use his method to subdue the both of them, which may have been why he was smiling. Then again, the Trickster seems to be enjoying it, as well. From my own experience, I think he enjoys not being in control of himself. This would compliment and maybe even balance the Ruler if they didn’t share a body and have such a hard time using their abilities against one another. They seem to be heavy on the love/hate, showing their lack of balance even in their attempt to be balancing for one another.

They both dissolve back into my mind after a short pause, then all is quiet again. I walk out of the room and move toward the living room again, hopefully so that I can help Robin. She’s sitting on the couch, waiting patiently for me. “Are you doing better now?” she asks, smiling. “I hope you got everything sorted out. I was so worried about you, sir.” I frown, shaking my head.

“Please don’t call me that.” She looks shocked and a little hurt.

“Why not? Isaac calls you ‘sir’ all the time.”

“You’re not Isaac,” I snap. “You’ve got no reason to refer to me so formally, you’re my wife!”

“Am I not allowed to respect you?” she asks, her gaze fixed on the floor. 

I push her chin up, making eye contact. “You’re not supposed to be like this,” I say, my voice quiet. “I didn’t change you, or at least I didn’t mean to. I don’t want you to be like this—you’re not supposed to be like this, you’re supposed to help me and guide me and not be completely subservient to me, Robin.” I flop myself on the couch next to her. “I’m sorry I let this happen. I’m so, so sorry. This was a mistake. I should have never… I’m sorry.” She blinks at me in disbelief, not comprehending the situation.

“I’m sorry I’ve made you angry,” she says, her eyebrows scrunching together. “Is there anything I can do to help? To fix it, or make it better?”

I put my head in my hands and sigh. “No. I need to fix this.”

“Sir—I’m sorry, Tom—I don’t really want to be fixed. I like this quite a bit.” She shrugs, a small smile gracing her lips. “I mean, I had so much doubt before, and now I’m free of that for who knows how long. I really like that. Please don’t give that back to me.” I stare at the floor as she continues. “I want to be utterly devoted to you. I want to follow you about like this. You’re like a god to me. I want to treat you like that.” I look over at her, hoping my face gives off the same level of disbelief that I feel.

“Please stop,” I whisper. “You’re not supposed to be like this.”

“Well, I can’t help it,” she says, shrugging. “Whatever happened, this is how I am now. I don’t want to upset you further, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about it other than to rewrite me again, and I’d really rather you didn’t.”

I sigh. I need to face this—both the threat of being overturned by rebels and the dissonance between Ruler and Trickster—alone, lest someone else get hurt. Robin has already been harmed by this conflict, and I would rather she not suffer any further. I resolve to get her separated from the conflict, and my mind formulates a simple and efficient plan to do so. Looking at her, I give a small smile and ask, “Tell you what. Do you want to dance? Sometime soon, I mean.”

She nods eagerly, and grins. “I would love to.”

 

Robin comes down the stairs in a beautiful dress, glimmering gold and white accentuating her figure as she takes careful steps. I’m reminded of one of our first nights together, the one where I dragged her along with me to a publicity event where I reshaped the minds of the social elite, then spent the rest of the evening dancing. She had told me then that she had never intended to leave. It didn’t take her long to break that ideal, but to be fair, I was the reason she did. Had I only been less cruel… She doesn’t seem to quite mind anymore, but I’ve broken and rebuilt her too many times to count by this point in our history for her to even remember something bad like that. It’s unfortunate that such an occurrence is taking place because the Ruler dictated it, but there’s not much I can do about it now.

She seems to remember the dance, though, because her face is alight with a glow I haven’t seen in years. She seems so excited to see me, so excited at the prospect of once again meeting me upon a ballroom floor. With a heavy heart, I manage a smile, then extend my hand. When she is finally all the way down the stairs, she takes it, and we are gone to the place where we first danced.

The floor is emptier today than it was when last we visited, with no senators littering the room, only a small party of people. The light is low, music playing sweetly in the background, and it’s hard to even imagine that this is the same place we were before with how deserted it is now, even though there are still a few couples off on the edges that dance as sweetly and slowly as we intend. Robin doesn’t seem to notice, or at least she doesn’t care. She smiles at me, putting her hands around my waist as she once did, and I move my hands up to her shoulders to mirror her memory. We sway slightly to the music, enjoying one another’s company for a time, then she starts to pick up the pace. 

The two of us are unnoticed at first, moving fluidly across the room and into one another’s arms, spinning and moving into one another’s rhythm like we were born to dance together. Some of the others start to take notice, stopping their dual orbits of one another to watch our own. She feels like an extension of me, and I’m sure she feels the same way of me. The thought gets under my skin like a bad itch, but I dismiss it as I continue to move across the floor with her.

I almost feel bad, enticing her to dance and making her believe that everything is alright when I have something far more saddening in mind following this. Some would call it insidious. I think it’s necessary to ensure her safety, especially since I’ve already seen the awful things that can happen to her with the Ruler and the Trickster. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if Isaac or Loki got involved in the conflict. I think they would tear her apart in an instant. I need to get her away from it all. I just want to use this as a send-off, a way of helping her become more comfortable with what’s about to happen to her.

She’s enjoying herself, a wide grin on her face as she lets loose. Her dress billows out around her hips, creating a whirlwind of flickering light on the floor. I smile at her, my own outfit somewhat mundane in comparison, and she spins on her own, no longer confined to my arms. My heart floats as she turns, and I feel strange. Part of me doesn’t want to imprison her as I plan, but I have grown used to part of me disagreeing with the rest, so I ignore it. Taking a deep breath, I join her once again in the dance. Many of the people around us have stopped now, watching us, engrossed by our movements. I think they’ve realized who we are, as they follow us with their eyes, transfixed.

Robin twirls, and for a moment, I am drawn into her as well. It’s moments like these, simple little things that remind me why I married her, why I hold her so close to my heart. Certainly I can influence the minds and hearts of the populace en masse, but she is hypnotic in her own right, a sight to behold and absolutely perfect for me. She is breathtaking. Everyone else seems to have a similar idea, as well. She was a good choice for a queen.

While I am still in this mood, I sweep her up as the entranced onlookers take a step toward us. With a single look, anyone who may have reached toward her, trying to dance with her, is driven off. I embrace her, and I teleport us back to our own home.

She looks up at me, blinking, and I enter her mind. “ _I’m sorry,_ ” I tell her, and I start flipping metaphorical switches to turn off her mind. This isn’t like a permanent shutdown—I’m not ripping out wires or anything, just flipping circuit breakers to the “off” position. She sits in relative peace, smiling and waiting for me to finish. The lights start to go out, and she looks a little scared, but at the same time, she seems content and complacent. Just before the last light in her head goes out, I take her by the hand and kiss her on the forehead. “ _I’m just trying to protect you._ ”

“ _What are you going to do?”_ she asks, and I flip off the last switch. In the outside world, she collapses into my arms, deeply asleep. I teleport once more to a place that Loki has told me about several times, in the basement of the media building where several people are kept in stasis so that their tissues are not damaged, their bodily functions remain stable, et cetera. They are being kept alive here because otherwise, in the outside world without aid, they would die, and they are all necessary to society in one way or another. I have chosen the room that is the furthest back, the one that is otherwise empty, one that they will have no reason to access.

I load Robin’s limp body into one of the carrier slots, and with a small sigh, it accepts her. She’s imprisoned, in a sense, but she is safe, and she will not be aware of the time that passes. She will remain in this state until I wake her. I make sure the stasis chamber is calibrated properly, then walk out of the room and make certain the door closes behind me. Making my way up the stairs, I easily find Loki and make eye contact, freezing him in place.

“I-is there anything I can do for you?” he asks, his voice suddenly feeble. “Sir?”

“The back room of the area where the stasis chambers are kept. You know it.”

“What about it?”

“ _Make sure no one gets in_ ,” I tell him, my voice laden with command, and his eyes widen and go blank.

“Yes, sir,” he says, nodding slightly. “No one at all.” He looks down to his tablet, then punches in a few things. “Anyone that enters until you allow me to shut down the lockdown will suffer from paralytic shocks, even you or me.”

“Good,” I tell him, smiling. “Very good, Loki. You’ve done well. Thank you.” He beams at me, and there’s a small surge of pride inside me when I see how happy he is to have pleased me. At the same time, though, I feel shame in forcing this mindset upon him, especially when he is naturally so inclined toward rebellion and chaos. It would be more like him to orchestrate my downfall, but at the same time, it may not, considering that he needs me to survive. Or perhaps he only needs my body. I have no way of knowing—the true Loki’s mind is carefully guarded, lying inside of mine in wait like a dormant cancer. I cannot read it, as it is not awake, but that is for the best. I would rather not have to deal with who Loki used to be. There is one last thing I must address, though. “ _Now forget that I asked you to do this. It’s for maintenance and safety.”_

A newer, thicker glaze drops over his eyes as he nods. “Yes,” he says, almost breathless, staring at me. I smile at him again, but this time his expression remains passive and blank. I know that inside of him, there was a burst of happiness, but it’s a little abnormal to see him so calm. He looks like he’s done with his work for the day, so I ask him if he’d like to come home with me. He nods silently, and we are home in an instant, in the middle of the living room.

Looking about, the first question he asks is, “Where’s Robin?”

“ _Don’t worry about it,_ ” I respond. “ _She’s fine. Just going to be gone for a few weeks. She wanted a bit of a vacation._ ”

“Oh,” Loki responds, nodding as his gaze grows even more distant. “Of course. That’s reasonable, especially considering all that’s been happening.”

“I thought so too,” I tell him. A slight, giddy smile is creeping up on his face. “Are you alright?”

He giggles—something I’ve never heard him do before. I’m deeply unsettled. “That means it’s just us and Isaac, doesn’t it?”

I may have made a mistake. “It would appear so,” I reply with a bit of apprehension.

“That’s good,” he says, smiling. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been alone. I’d really like to spend some time with you, if that’s alright.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, giving him a bit of a look. “ _You won’t be trying anything strange._ ”

“Of course not,” he says, his lips parting slightly. I keep pushing him back under my control, and it’s starting to take a toll on him, it would seem. But at the same time, I’d rather he didn’t attempt to do anything to me that either of us would regret, and he seems to be enjoying it given the slight smile he’s wearing. “I just wanted to ask for something.”

“What’s that?” I ask, and he smiles.

“I’d just like a bit more personal time with you, that’s all. With Isaac or without, it doesn’t matter to me. I’d really like for you to take control of me. Please.”

I raise my eyebrow at him. “What?” I ask, trying to sound incredulous. “ _Why are you like this?_ ” I feel bad controlling him over and over again, but it’s the only way I can be certain he’ll be honest. If his already glassy eyes could have gone any more blank, they would have, and he looks completely entranced by my very presence.

“I care very much about you,” he says, “and I enjoy feeling like this. I would hope that it would help get out some of your instinct and inclination to control, as well. I think Isaac might enjoy it in the same way.”

“What would you have me do?” I ask, moving toward the couch and gesturing for him to do the same.

“More of what you’ve been,” he replies, “just commands and the like. My job is stressful, and I’d like to stop thinking for a while.”

The more I think about it, the more it becomes about helping Loki and the less it becomes about control, so I become much more comfortable with the idea. Smiling, I nod at him. “Of course.” After briefly mentally contacting Isaac to see his opinion on the matter, the younger one shows as well. He seems so happy to be here, and grins alongside Loki and sits next to him on the couch. They both look so eager to lose their free will that for a moment it throws me off. “Are you certain about this?” I ask them. Both nod, so I sit near them and begin.

“Loki,” I say, deciding to handle him first, “ _I’d like you to relax.”_ He melts into the couch, a wide smile spreading across his face.

“Of course, sir,” he responds, and his voice is already losing color. “Please, sir… more.”

 _“You shouldn’t request things of me,”_ I respond, a bit jovial in tone. He grins, bowing his head.

“Of course, sir.” Isaac looks like he’s feeling a little left out, even though he’s basking in the cadence of my voice, so I decide to help him a bit.

“Isaac, _are you doing alright?_ ” I ask, and he squirms a little in joy.

“Yes, sir,” he responds, “I’m just fine. Go ahead and keep working with Loki.”

Nodding, I smile. “Good. Loki, _you’re relaxing very much, and that’s good, but I’d like for your mind to completely clear out._ ”

His body slumps almost instantly, dropping into a deep trance. “Yes, sir,” he says, and he is a blank slate, a tabula rasa, for me to do as I please. This is just for fun, though, so I’m not going to reshape him or do anything too terrible.

“ _Continue to enjoy yourself as you sit there,_ ” I tell him. “I’m going to move on to Isaac for a bit.” He nods, staring off into the distance, and I wonder how out of it he really is—he seems more deeply entranced than I’ve ever seen anyone I’ve controlled before. He must be really reveling in it. I turn to Isaac, who is practically bouncing in his seat by now. “ _Isaac, please calm yourself.”_ He settles down, giving me a smile. I continue on in this manner, ordering them to be completely under my control, until I grow bored and decide that I want answers.

“So,” I start, looking over the two, “would you ever consider betraying me? _Be honest.”_

Loki squirms a little. I can tell that he wasn’t particularly fond of the command. “Yes. I’m already helping to do so.” So Loki is a part of the rebellion. “I’m sorry if this answer displeases you.”

“No, Loki,” I tell him, “it’s a good answer. How invested are you in the rebellion?”

“Just passively,” he says. “My allegiance is still firmly entrenched to you… and I am doing this in part because you do not wish to rule any longer, and in part because I also have a soft spot for my old friend, the Trickster. He is incapable of seeing everything fall, so I am trying to help him a little instead. I do not plan to allow harm to come to you, however, only to dismantle what the Ruler built and return free will and chaos to the people. As such, I haven’t been very active in it, and have done some amounts of sabotage to them in order to keep them from being too effective. There is a divide even in me, however, where one side is inclined toward the Ruler’s ideology instead of yours. It is more regimented in its chaos.”

“Alright,” I say with a nod. I like that answer, and it brings me to trust Loki just a little more—he’s doing what I’ve told him I want, and he’s trying to keep them from killing me in the process. True, he’s split on his decisions, but I am too, so I can’t really judge him. “Isaac? Same for you.”

“I want this empire to flourish,” he responds, “and if betraying you would help it to do so, well, maybe. The idea of displeasing you makes me uncomfortable, friend, and I wish for as little harm to these people as possible when they follow you, but if you were to try to actively stop yourself from being a ruler, I think I would have to do something about it. That would directly contradict my very purpose, and I do this only for self-preservation. Sometimes I am a little more violent than I should be in trying to dismantle whatever I can find of this revolution, but I try to keep that to a minimum. I do not want to hurt anyone, and I do so only if they are trying to take things apart.”

“Thank you,” I tell Isaac, and mull this over. He’s trying to keep the empire together, and I don’t fault him for that—it’s his purpose in life, after all. But at the same time, it’s going to be difficult trying to work against him without him finding out, especially since he’s in my head all the time with the rest of them. It might be a better idea to just let them go at it on each other like I did with the Ruler and the Trickster, to wear one another down until I can decide on a proper course of action. “I have a single request for both of you, as well.”

“Yes?” they ask in perfect unison.

“ _Robin is in stasis. You are not to touch her, to interact with her, or to remember where she is. You will forget that I have asked this of you immediately, but still must follow its mandates subconsciously.”_

“Of course, sir,” they reply, bowing their heads slightly. They really do seem like brothers like this.

“ _Good. Wake up,_ ” I order, and the two open their eyes to an empty room.


	6. I want to walk to the edge of it tonight, and I fall down

I’ve been getting out more.

It’s liberating, in a sense, to go out and see what people think of me. I’ve been wandering around, making my way through my empire, occasionally pretending to be someone else and playing the devil’s advocate just to see what people really do think of me. I’ve almost been beaten up a few times for speaking badly of myself, but whenever I reveal myself and tell them that they’ve done well, that this was a sort of a test, they calm down and become very complacent. Granted, it’s something of a lie—I’m not going about testing people for their faith in me—but they don’t need to know differently. All they need to know is that they’re doing well, and that their ruler is encouraging them.

I feel a bit bad encouraging people to believe in me, though, because I’m trying to sow seeds of my own downfall at the same time. I’ve found more children that I can’t read, and some adults as well. I don’t have the slightest idea why they’re like this, but when I make eye contact with them in the street, they break it and scurry away like mice. I don’t think they can sense that I mean them no harm—after all, they are trying to kill me in cold blood. I think they’ll have an awfully difficult time of it, but if their hearts are so set on it that they can’t be convinced that they should take another course of action, that’s not my fault. I can’t change them, after all, for whatever reason.

I used to do this a lot more often, but after a time I started to feel like I was stagnating by doing this, so I stopped and withdrew myself from the world for a while, save for my bi-weekly broadcasts where I keep people informed of what is going on. Generally speaking, it’s a lot of bureaucratic things, but since most of the laws and decrees have stabilized in an area where they are reasonable and easy to enact, it’s been a very long time since I’ve reported anything besides congratulations save for my last report—the one involving Isaac and the rebels. I’m due to make another one later this week, I think, but I’m not entirely certain. Loki is the one that keeps track of these things, not me, since I’m almost incapable of keeping my weeks straight.

That said, I almost feel guilty picking up the slack I created in Robin, going out and meeting people and making sure that everything is running smoothly. She used to be more personal like I’m doing now, since she was better at relating to humans than I was. Now that I’ve locked her away, though, I can’t really do that. I regret it a little, but there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve taken to watching the security cameras off and on when I have spare time, though, just to make sure that her stasis chamber is safe. I do other things at the same time—I try not to be obsessive if I can help it—but it makes me feel safer to know that she’s safe.

Tonight is a different story.

I’m passively watching the feed as I make myself a sandwich. I thought it would be a good idea to get something in my stomach, since I don’t remember the last time I ate. It could have been four hours ago. It could have been four days ago. My bodily functions are inconsistent in reminding me to feed myself, but it doesn’t really matter much, all things considered. At least, I don’t think it does. I suppose my powers have been significantly weaker in the past few days. I should probably watch that a little more closely. At any rate, I’ve just begun eating it when I turn toward the screen again and notice something rather peculiar.

The feed is glitchy. It’s state of the art technology. It shouldn’t be glitchy. I can see Loki working on his tablet on something. I have no doubts that it’s him. I’m a little frustrated, but I want to see what he’s doing before I jump to any conclusions. There’s a shadowy figure in the center of the chamber, and something about it is very familiar. Perhaps the overall shape, I don’t know. Loki’s opening the door, but he’s not passing through. The field is still in place—there’s no way he could get through, or so he told me. He told me that absolutely no one could enter at all.

It occurs to me that he never told me no one could exit.

The figure leaves through the field with nary a scratch, and the doors shut again. Loki looks terribly pleased with himself, and the other person gives him a pat on the back. I realize, suddenly, that they’re not supposed to be shadowy in that sort of lighting—Loki has blocked off recognition of their face, making it dark, patchy and indistinct. I look back to where Robin is being kept, and it is completely undisturbed. I can see her face, still peaceful as ever, through the glass near her head. I take a deep breath, realizing that Loki hasn’t technically done anything wrong (after all, he did not enter the chamber, nor did he disturb Robin), and sit down to eat.

It’s not long before the figure leaves and the feed returns to normal. I call out to Loki with my mind, as this is quite distressing despite it not being out-and-out against what I’ve directed, and he shows up only seconds after I call. His face is paler than usual, his dark hair frizzy and his eyes flitting around the room like frightened birds. “Yes?” he asks, and I laugh a little—I’ve never seen anyone look more guilty in my life.

“Don’t be afraid, Loki,” I tell him. “I just want to know what you did. You tampered with the feed and blocked out the image of a person, yet no one in the room seems to be missing. How did they get there? You didn’t do anything inherently wrong, or at least you didn’t break any of my mandates. I’m not going to punish you. I just want to know what happened.”

I imagine I’m less intimidating while I sit on the floor eating a sandwich, but Loki still looks petrified. He shakes his head, biting his lip as he does so. “I shouldn’t,” he says, and I notice he’s sweating a little. “I shouldn’t have done it. I knew this would happen.”

“Loki, what did you do?” I ask, my voice remaining nonchalant. “I’ve just told you I’m not going to punish you.”

“There was someone inside the room,” he says, “someone that was asking me to help them get out. They were important for—for running the media, but they needed to be put into stasis for a while because they had a bit of a condition. I didn’t want you to worry about them, so I blocked out their face even in the stasis chamber, and took them off of the feeds. It’s not important, I promise.” He’s shaking. I stand, then put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s alright,” I tell him. “I’m not going to do anything. Don’t worry about it.”

“Why?” he asks, eyes wide. “I thought you would punish me.”

“If that was all you were seeking, then not punishing you is its own punishment,” I respond. “Otherwise, I would think you would be grateful that I’m not.”

“I am.” Folding his arms, he withdraws into himself. “I was just prepared for… other things.”

“You thought I was going to hurt you,” I say, still eating my sandwich.

“Yes.” He looks like a wounded animal, pushed into a corner and threatened with death, even though he’s standing in front of me and I’m the one on the floor with my back to the cupboards. “Please don’t.”

Sighing, I stand up. “I’m not going to hurt you, Loki. I’ve told you that several times now.” I finish my sandwich, then shake my head. “Are you doing alright? You’re acting strange.” He looks at the floor and takes a step back, nodding slowly. “Alright, then. You should probably go to bed or something. You seem to be under a lot of stress, and I know that sleeping seems to help you.”

“Yes,” he says softly. “I suppose it does.” With that, he trudges off to the couch. I suppose that means I’m not going to do much more sitting around tonight. It might be in my best interests to try to go to sleep for the night, but for some reason I find myself drawn to the balcony again. This is becoming almost routine, and I’m not certain how I feel about it, but I let my legs take me through the screen door anyway.

I step out onto the porch, looking out over the estate. It’s early September, and the heat has finally broken. It’s still warm, certainly, but it’s not nearly so warm as it was only a few weeks ago when I thought it would be a good idea to run around in the middle of the night. Granted, it was cooler then, but it was still a bad idea. I’ve been thinking for a little while when I feel a slight tremble. My eyes flit around, trying to discern where it came from, when there is another one, stronger this time. I grab the railing and slide to the ground, hoping that nothing worse happens.

The next tremor does nothing but aggravate my fears. The entire house trembles under its might, and I start to wonder why on earth there are earthquakes here. I am absolutely certain that we are nowhere near a tectonic plate, and after browsing the minds of people in the general area, there seems to be nothing going on outside of the vicinity of my home. Loki hasn’t even woken up. I suppose that means it’s not as bad as I thought, but at the same time, I’d rather not chance it. I send out a broadcast through the house for anyone who has any information to please report back to me. 

In an instant, Isaac is screeching in my mind about how it’s the rebels, how they’ve found us again and they’re trying to destroy the house. I consider dismissing him, but at the same time, there’s a small chance that he’s right. I ask him to prove it, and he tells me that he can smell darkness on the grounds, that he can tell that the plague that had been affecting Robin was now here as well. It was strange that he would smell just the disbelief, not a person with it, but I shrug it off. I ask him to track down the source, and he agrees and goes silent. The tremors continue, and I have no idea what to do about them.

It’s not long before Isaac reports that he’s found the source, but as soon as he does, I find myself gripping the rails so tightly that my knuckles turn white. The ground seems to be trying to upend itself, and I feel nauseous as it trembles beneath me. It’s difficult to keep my sandwich down, and I regret eating at all. Powers be damned, I’d rather go hungry than end up with that awful burning sensation in my throat. After my distraction, Isaac tells me again that he’s found where it’s coming from—whatever it is, it’s coming from the basement. I don’t want to go down there, especially without Robin—there’s something weird down there that I don’t want to approach, but if I want the house to remain standing, it doesn’t look like I’m going to have a lot of choice. I stand carefully, then walk back inside the house and steady myself on walls and anything else I can manage to find.

Several objects have fallen from their perches, but Loki is somehow still asleep. I brace myself against the wall and make my way through the living room, then head toward the kitchen so I can go around to the stairs to the basement. There’s another tremor, and Isaac urges me to hurry. I think he might be just as afraid as I am, if not moreso. I manage to make my way down the stairs to the door to the basement. I open the door, and staring me straight in the face is Robin.

Well, not quite. Her hair is dark, and her eyes are an intense violet. She looks pale, almost sickly, but she’s still recognizable. She’s got the same face, the same glare when I’ve done something wrong. It’s unmistakably my wife, but something is very different about her. Then I blink, and she’s gone. I try to restart my breathing, but I have notable trouble in doing so. I feel like I’ve had a heart attack or something. Taking a shaky step down the stairs, I keep trying to breathe even as another tremor rocks me to my core. I cling to the handrail, but it’s almost not enough to keep me stable. I practically run down the rest of the stairs, trying to get on stable ground as soon as I can manage, then look around the basement frantically.

There’s nothing down here. I almost chastise Isaac, but I think it might be a better idea to fully explore before I give him a hard time. I’ve just hallucinated, after all, and since we’re connected mentally, this might not even be happening—just more hallucinations that he’s feeling, too. I’d feel awful if that were the case, but I don’t know what’s going on yet, so I can’t make any judgments.

I’ve just started my deeper search when I see her again, lurking in the corner. She smiles at me, puts a finger to her lips, and disappears again, causing another tremor. I look at the spot where she was standing, and I see a bit of scattered debris and a hole—it seems like something exploded there. It occurs to me that I don’t know where any of these are buried, but they seem to be hidden in the framework of my home, their intent completely focused on taking my house apart. I will not stand for this, and with a wave of my hand, the foundation that she’s just tried to demolish is whole again. I don’t know how Robin is here—I saw her remain there on the security feed—but at the same time, Loki was definitely releasing someone. But it couldn’t be exactly the same as her, with the differences I’ve seen. 

I have no idea what on earth could be going on, but I’m going to try to take it in stride. There are two Robins. One of them is intent on killing me. The other is in stasis and isn’t going to be doing anything any time soon. It occurs to me that this Robin might be leading the rebels. It also occurs to me that there might be some reason she’s lead me into the basement. Maybe she’s trying to collapse the house on my head. At this point, I don’t think I’d mind, so I remain in the basement and just try to clean up the messes she’s made. Every time I see her, another explosion goes off, and I have to remake the support for the house. She’s not being terribly effective, I think, and then there’s a deafening _boom,_ and I’m flying through the air, dazed.

The impact with the wall hurts more than anything I can remember since my fall to earth, and it takes me a moment to realize I think I’ve broken my neck for the second time in my life. I can’t move my body at all. It takes me a bit, but as I sit there and let myself heal, I have a lot of time to let my brain calm down. Without moving, I try to look toward the direction of the blast. I can’t see anything, though, so I sit there for what feels like a few hours but might be only several minutes and let my body right itself. It still hurts like hell, but I’m able to sit up now, and I notice that there’s been a hole blown in the floor where Robin and I were standing not so long ago, trying to discern why she felt like she was a ghost. I get up and walk over to the hole, then look inside it out of curiosity.

There’s nothing there. I shake my head and leave it be, traversing the stairs and leaving the basement. This was strange, and I’m not sure what’s going on with the dual Robin issue, but it’s easy for me to pass it off as an illusion. Clearly someone who is capable of not being affected by my own control is forcing illusions upon me. They must have forgotten what their own queen looked like. It’s insulting, frankly, that they would mess up Robin’s appearance so terribly. Not to mention, there was nothing in the floor anyway. It was all a terrible ruse that shouldn’t have affected me nearly as much as it did.

The rebels are a force to be reckoned with if they are doing this now, but I’d rather not think about such things right now. I’d rather wait it out. I can feel that someone else is sensing my presence—I don’t know why or how I know this, I’m just suddenly hit with the idea—and I dash up the stairs to my room, hide under the blankets, and do my best to turn off my own mind. I cannot continue like this, obviously—if they know that I am here, they can send me more illusions, and that will be catastrophic in the long run. I keep my eyes tightly closed, but even as I do I can feel a gentle hand upon me and a cackling I don’t recognize. They’re trying to scare me. I lash out with energy, letting my instincts take over and reshaping things at random in waves away from me. I hope that I can disrupt someone’s vital functions so that they stop this, but all I seem to have managed to do is make my blanket feel like rattlesnakes. Then again, I’m still hiding, so I don’t really know what else I’ve done without looking, and I’d really rather not look right now, all things considered.

I end up falling asleep before I look out of my nest, and my dreams are plagued with the strange not-quite-Robin’s face.

 

Loki nods at me as the camera starts rolling. I give the audience a saccharine smile, and begin the speech I’ve thought up in the ten minutes prior to the broadcast. This is more an emergency broadcast, coming on the day after the event, rather than the bi-weekly one—I still have another scheduled for later this week. I straighten my back as I start to talk to the entirety of the world.

“Hello. As you’ll recall, it hasn’t been very long since I last spoke to you. In fact, I’m sure some of you are thinking I’m not due to make an announcement for several more days. Unfortunately, I must bring something to light.” I let myself frown, and look intensely into the camera. “One of you—one among the billions—has the ability to formulate illusions and tried to kill me last night. This is your final warning. If I could die, I would have, so I suppose you should get some sort of commendation for effort. Nevertheless, you were both inaccurate in your attempt to frighten me and very uncouth. I’d ask you to try to do better, but I’m afraid that if you try, and I do manage to find you, you’ll meet your end in a timely manner.”

I find myself laughing, and the Ruler inside me fears that they won’t take me seriously if I keep showing this part of me like this, but I can’t stop cackling. “Does that sink in? If you try to fight me, you will lose. There is no way out for you if you try to hurt me.” I stop, composing myself, and apologize. “That was rather blunt and rude of me. I care very much about all of you and about keeping you safe, and if you continue to insist that we would be better off in anarchy as you would suggest—perhaps, I mean, I’m not even certain what you’re aiming for, as you haven’t given me any sort of indication—then, well, I’ll have to stop you for the good of us all.”

I can already feel the world starting to grow in apprehension, and I decide that there’s only one real way to finish this message. “ _If you find anyone who speaks out against me, anyone who doesn’t seem quite right, report them to Loki. They will be dealt with appropriately.”_ I feel them calm, I feel the sudden wave of complacency and obedience wash over them as it broadcasts to every mind on the planet. There’s a small burst of satisfaction that I get, and then it’s gone and I feel dirty and sickened by my own actions.

I give a short send-off, then flee from the studio and bury myself in my bed again.

 

“Sir, you can’t stay in bed forever,” Loki tells me, but I disagree vehemently without saying a word. No one has reported anyone. The rebels must be very good at hiding themselves. Either that, or my commands are starting to wear down on anyone that’s not inside my own mind. Maybe there’s just one rebel and they’ve gone into hiding. I don’t know. I mean, I can’t know. I can’t read them. They might just all be illusions and one person that can affect me that I can’t detect. But who on earth would be able to resist me? That is the ultimate question—humans are hardwired to fall to my commands. So why is there anyone—individual or group—who can defy them? My words should bring them an incredible sense of peace and joy from following what I ask. But they don’t. I don’t understand.

Loki clears his throat. “Sir. Please. We need you. Things are… well, there are things that you need to do. Your schedule isn’t open anymore. We need re-evaluations of the status of the world. We need to determine proper sub-rulers for the coming year. There are a lot of people who need to speak with you. You can’t just hide from the world like this.” I groan at him and shift a little. It’s cold outside of my bubble. I don’t want to get up. I’ll just screw everything up anyway.

“Too cold,” I tell him.

“It’s September,” he responds. “It’s ninety degrees out.”

“Too cold,” I repeat.

“Have you somehow managed to get yourself sick?” he asks. “I didn’t think you were capable of catching human illnesses. You’ve never managed it before.”

“I am deathly ill with the plague,” I deadpan. “Please leave before you catch it.”

“I’m starting to think you just don’t want to get out of bed.” I think he’s glaring at me.

“Oh, no. You caught me. You’ve figured out my master plan. You should get a medal.”

“What on earth has happened to you?” Now he’s sitting on my bed. This is the opposite of what I wanted. “I’m starting to think you actually are ill. You’re not acting like yourself, shirking responsibilities. You’re usually so concerned with the humans and their affairs that you’d never let something like this slip.”

I shuffle away from him, taking my blanket pile with me. “The humans want me dead. I want to die. Just let me stay in bed and rot. Please.”

“You won’t rot,” Loki insists. “You’re going to get really hungry first. Doing this will help to take your mind off the rebels. Please, please get up.”

“They’re going to have to see me like this if I do,” I reply. “Getting out of bed is enough of an effort without me actually trying to look like a living person.”

“Fine. As long as you get up and do it.” Loki shrugs, and I wince.

“I hope they don’t mind being ruled by a zombie.”

After ten more minutes of Loki trying to coax me into teleporting there, we end up in his car. I brought one of my blankets with me and have covered myself up entirely once more so that I don’t have to look at the world. It’s a nice blanket, besides. I appreciate its softness as opposed to the texture it had taken on a few days ago. Its texture, combined with the soft rocking of the car, lulls me to sleep in only fifteen minutes or so.

I wake when Loki starts trying to drag me out of the car. I think he thought I was just trying to be difficult and not answering him, but I didn’t hear a word he’d said. “Sorry,” I say, and put the blanket in the car. Loki shuts the door, and we start walking into the building. I don’t know how long I’ve kept these people waiting, but it’s probably been a very long time and I feel terrible. I don’t feel any more rested, either. I’m just as exhausted as I was before. I want to go home and go back to bed, but I know that at this point, it’d be completely out of the question.

Everyone stands up when I walk into the room. I’ve come to learn it’s a sign of respect. I must look terrible. Trying my best to give a smile and look somewhat presentable, I sit down at the head of the table. They look to me as though I’m supposed to say something. “Hello?” I say, nervous. “Not really sure what you want me to do here. I seem to remember a lot of self-directed conversations during these.”

“Yes,” one of them speaks up, “but you’ve very nearly died. We thought it might be better to look to our ruler for guidance.”

“I didn’t almost die,” I tell them. “I just broke my neck for a bit. It’s happened before. It’s not a big deal.” They look at me as though I’ve said something truly amazing, and I shake my head. “Please direct this conversation yourself. I’ll give you guidance as you go.”

Many of them blink in confusion, but they seem to have no trouble getting things together without any input from me at all, though many of them constantly look to me to see my reaction. I try to remain passive and nod occasionally. I’m practically a spectator in their events. “See?” I tell them at the end. “Didn’t even need me. I’m surprised you haven’t already decided I’m obsolete.” A few of them laugh, and I give them a chuckle, even though I’m not joking. Some of them seem to have caught on, but I’m down the stairs and on my way out of the building before they can respond. Loki is waiting for me in the lobby, doing something on his tablet as per the usual. He looks up at me, then sighs. “We’ve got other places to be today, but you look like you’re ill. I don’t think it’ll be a very good boost for morale.”

That might’ve been why people kept looking at me—not out of concern for what I thought of the plans, but out of concern for my health. A load of good their concern did, with no one saying anything. “I’d really like to go home,” I tell him. “I’d really, really like to go home.”

“I can see that,” he says. “Are… are you feeling well? I mean, you seemed almost ill this morning, but you look to have gotten worse.”

“I feel like I’m dying,” I tell him. “Or like I should be. I don’t want to do anything ever again. I just want to go back to bed.”

“I think you’re very ill,” he says, putting a hand to my forehead. “You’re terribly pale.”

“I don’t feel like I’m sick,” I respond. “Guess I wouldn’t know what it felt like, but… it doesn’t feel right. I feel like I’m sick in my head, not in my body.”

Loki looks at his tablet and taps in a few things. “Depression, perhaps?”

I shrug as I go down the steps in front of the building and climb into the car. “Sounds a little more reasonable.” My blanket is so soft. I wrap myself up in it, forming a cocoon of fabric. “I seem to be mired in self-hatred and guilt. I don’t want to get out of bed and do anything. I don’t want to exist. Does that sound like depression to you?”

“Certainly,” Loki tells me. “I’m very sorry you have this affliction. I’m not quite sure how to help you, to be honest.”

“I think leaving me alone for long periods of time is a start,” I respond.

“Is it possible for you to kill yourself?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“Don’t think so. Could be wrong, but I wasn’t planning on trying because I don’t think it’ll work.” 

“Alright,” he says. “I’m going to reschedule these events and leave you at home alone for a few days. Get a good deal of rest. Don’t focus on responsibilities—they’ll wait for you. Talk to Isaac and see what he can do. If there’s anything that I can do for you, don’t hesitate to let me know.”

“Thanks,” I tell him, giving him a smile from my blanket nest in the passenger seat. “I really appreciate it.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he says, shaking his head. “I just want you to feel better.”

“I don’t know if it’ll help, but it won’t hurt,” I tell him. “At least, I don’t think it will.” I curl up and close my eyes, and as I try to drift off, I numbly perceive that he’s saying something, but I don’t know what it is. It almost sounds like a song. I don’t focus too much on it, though, and eventually it helps me to fall asleep.

I wake up again as we arrive home. Loki smiles at me. “Are you feeling any better?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“Not a ton. A little bit, but not enough.”

He pats me on the back, giving me a sympathetic look. “I hope things will start looking up for you, sir. You should get inside.” I pick up my blanket and walk to the house much slower than I originally intended. I’m only halfway there when my knees give out and I find myself unable to move any further. Loki lets out an ungodly noise like metal being torn apart and runs to my side. “Sir! Sir, are you alright?” I try to get up, but only succeed in rolling over, leaving my blanket on the sidewalk as I splay myself out, spread-eagled, on the grass.

“Probably not,” I respond. “I’m going to have to wash this shirt. Grass stains.”

Loki just stares at me.

“I think I should get up,” I state, “but I don’t think I can.” I try to push myself up, groaning with the effort, but my muscles won’t move. “Affirmative.”

He says something that I don’t quite hear, and I find myself suddenly upright and dizzy, leaning on his shoulder and taking a few steps forward. “What did you do?” I ask, and he smiles and shakes his head.

“Just a little something I learned to help you get into the house,” he responds, his words smooth and soothing. It’s easy for me to bask in his voice, letting it wash over me and numb my brain so that I don’t have to think about my self-loathing anymore. It’s peaceful, in a way, as I walk without a thought in my head up the stairs on the porch and in through the door. Loki leads me up the stairs to the second floor, then brings me into my room and makes me lie down on the bed. I let my mind clear, and he starts singing the song from the car again. I blink for a moment. I understand what he’s saying.

_“…Sert allt, anselner ane, na sertanin eri, na sertanin sol…”_

It’s _Reisuseln_. Granted, what he’s saying is fairly harmless—“you are safe, my words are comforting, let yourself be comforted, let yourself sleep”—but I’m concerned that he’s suddenly learned the language. “Did you take that from my mind?” I ask, and he stops momentarily to nod, giving me a gentle smile.

“It was some time ago, but I did learn _Reisuseln_ while we were closer. This is the first time it’s come in handy—the nature of your language is so soothing that I thought it would aid you.” I nod, then look him in the eye as I lean on his shoulder.

“Then you’ll understand this,” I say. “ _Sertsa jiatu anir_.” It means “you will not command me,” but I laced it with a command myself, making it both effective and a little ironic. 

He nods back, pulling the blanket over me. “Of course not, sir. I wouldn’t dream of it.” He runs his fingers through my hair, then steps back. I see him open his mouth, and I think words are coming out, but everything is getting a bit muddled, so I’m not entirely certain.

Loki keeps smiling, keeps moving his mouth as he gets on the bed next to me. My head seems to find it a natural reaction to place itself on his chest, and I embrace him tightly like he’s my only lifeline, my only way of staying in this world. He knows this. He has me under his thumb. The spell he’s woven around my mind is strong. But I don’t care. I’ve told him not to control me, but he can protect me all he wants. That’s why I’m clinging to him. He’s protecting me, keeping me safe. That’s all that matters.

I fall asleep with my head resting gently on his chest.


	7. I am on my knees, 'cause you're everything I need

I haven’t left the house for three weeks.

Most of my time has been spent curled up in a ball crying. I haven’t eaten for at least five days now, and have refused any attempts by Loki or Isaac to get me to ingest something. My depression has consumed me, and I do not know how to make it leave. Even Isaac cannot help me. They’ve both tried so hard, yet the feeling persists, and that makes me feel even worse. My emotional state has forced Loki to take off time from work to make sure that I’m improving, but I never do, so he keeps asking me what I need and I always start sobbing and apologizing to him for making him do this.

The worst part is, I don’t even know what it is that’s caused this sudden depression. Things change all the time, so I’m not sure which one of the changes that’s taken place is what brought this on. I’m slightly inclined to believe it’s Robin, but it could be the sudden rebellion and the attempted toppling of my empire. It is what I thought I wanted, but it could very well have evoked an emotional reaction in me. I am quite attached to the position of ruler, after all. I wouldn’t feel half as guilty about it if I could just interact with people. I love making them happy, and I’m keeping them under my thumb, controlled until I have use of them. This is inhumane. It’s stupid, frankly. This entire regime has been founded on the idea that I would want to keep ruling for this long, and now I’m sobbing relentlessly and confined to my home because my body will not move.

This is the worst part of it—I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I’ve tried to take care of myself, I really have, but I can barely get up the strength to go across the hallway and go to the bathroom. Loki is the only reason I’ve been able to sleep, and he’s been an absolute angel and brought me food every day. I think he’s trying to make me reliant on him, which is sort of funny, but I know it’s not going to work past this stage, so I let him keep doing it. If it makes him feel valued, I can’t blame him for doing it.

He’s mentioned on several occasions that I really should try to compose myself and manage a broadcast, but I’ve never been able to even get out of bed, so that’s been out of the question. I’m always tired, and no amount of sleep that I get seems to satisfy my brain. It’s a lot like being sick, but I’m not getting better. There’s no improvement and it’s been more than half a month. It weighs on me, makes me feel useless. Clearly I shouldn’t be a ruler at all if bouts of depression completely wipe the floor with me. How do people manage to get out of bed with mental illness? How do they get up and go about their day-to-day lives? I’m close to being a god and I can’t do it, so how can a mortal?

With my complete lack of strength, I may as well be growing mold. If sediment started to pile up on me, it would form a small hill, then a large hill, then perhaps a mountain of “blah.” My completely disheartened nature would flow through the rock like magma, erupting from the top in an explosion of ash and tears. The pulpy mixture would then rain down upon the countryside nearby, forming even more mountains of “blah.” It takes me a moment to realize that I would likely run out of oxygen, and that I’ve never experienced an acute lack of oxygen before. I wonder what it would be like.

Loki walks in the room to witness me pressing my face intently into the pillow, my hands pressing it up from below. “What on earth are you doing?!” he screeches, tossing me to the side. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“I’ve never experienced an acute lack of oxygen before,” I tell him. “I want to know what it feels like.”

“You’ll experience an acute lack of oxygen if you try to do that again,” he tells me, panting and sitting down on the bed next to me. “You very nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.”

“Sorry.” I roll back over, pushing my face into the pillow again, but neglecting the added pressure from its other side. My voice is muffled when I say, “I’m just sad. All the time. I don’t know what to do.”

“Why are you sad all the time? Do you know?” he asks, and I shrug listlessly. He tears the pillow out from beneath me, making me faceplant into the mattress. “Answer me.”

“Rude,” I mumble.

“I know you don’t feel well,” he tells me, “but I want to know if there’s any reason you can come up with so that I can help you with that.”

“I want to die in a hole,” I say, my face still squished into the mattress. “I’m a shitty ruler. I’m a shitty husband. I’m a shitty friend. I’m a shit-head. I hate myself.” I pull the pillow over the back of my head. “Go away. I’m a shit-head.”

I can feel Loki glaring at the back of my head. “This isn’t constructive in the slightest. Is it making you feel any better?”

I pause for a moment. “Maybe a little.”

“Really?” His voice brightens.

“No.”

“Then stop demeaning yourself.”

I scoff. “Because telling me that is _so_ helpful. You are _SO_ helpful, Loki. I’m grateful you’re here, because you have done _SO MUCH FOR ME._ What on earth would I do without you?”

“Starve,” he replies, and I realize he’s right.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him as I hear him take a step toward the door. He pauses, then asks:

“Are you really?”

“Yes.” I take the pillow off my head. “I am genuinely sorry. I’m being a shit-head, like I said. I wish I could make these thoughts just go away.”

He sits down next to me, shuffling himself toward leaning against the headboard so that I can use his chest as a pillow. While not quite as comfortable, it is more comforting to hear his heartbeat and to feel his fingers running through my hair. I lay my head on him, letting the calm start to wash over my mind as I try my hardest to relax and go back to sleep.

Loki says something, and I’m not sure whether it’s _Reisuseln_ or not, but it puts me at peace, and I find myself able to sit up when he asks me to do so. “The Trickster inside you is regaining his strength,” Loki says, grinning. “It’s been working.”

“What do you mean?” My head feels heavy and a little numb. It’s hard to think.

“The Trickster reveled in being controlled. Don’t you remember how good it felt to not be in control?” I nod, slowly. It was one of the greatest feelings I ever experienced. Then again, controlling others was another. I briefly realize that these are favored sensations provided by the other two partitions of my mind, but that thought is wiped away as I am commanded to concede control of my body to the Trickster.

 

I wake to find Isaac pinning me to the ground by my throat on the kitchen floor.

I look up and stare blankly at him, hoping that this will convey whatever change has just taken place, and it does. He takes his hand away and says, “The Trickster is a coward and a deviant. I do not understand.” What I do not understand is why Isaac reacted so violently to him. I ask him, but he does not give me the answer that I want to hear. “He has corrupted my alternate self so that he is not loyal to you, sir. Just as he’s done with Loki.”

“I was always loyal to the Trickster,” Loki spits. “We were good friends, once upon a time. The Ruler is the one who reshaped me into this form, so my alternate self is loyal to him. I despise the Ruler. As you can clearly see,” and he turns toward me with a frown, “I’m loyal to you even when I have been freed. There is no need for me to be controlled.”

“Unpredictable and dangerous,” Isaac responds. “You two are quite alike.”

“Stop it, both of you,” I say, sitting up. “Loki, you betrayed me.”

“I helped you,” he replies. “Look. You can move again. You can walk about and actually do things again.”

“You gave my body to a force of sheer destruction without my permission.” I stand up, walking toward Loki. “You attempted to control me, and you went against my orders and freed yourself. If you are going to try to justify yourself, I would suggest you come up with a better excuse.”

Loki has his head bowed and shakes from fear. “I—I’m sorry. I thought you would appreciate it.”

“Then you should have asked me first,” I tell him. “What else?”

“You were—you were forced to stay in bed day after day, and Isaac couldn’t help you. I thought that perhaps I could.”

I glare at him. “This conflict—this ‘rule or free will’ conflict is the reason I was bedridden and depressed in the first place, Loki. Forcing one extreme course of action isn’t going to help me.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, but I look into his mind and I know he’s lying, so I punch him into the wall. He leaves no scratches, dents, or blood as he sinks to the floor, his eyes pleading. I look into his mind again, and now he’s starting to regret his actions. “I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice cracking, and this time it’s genuine.

“That is how the Trickster would treat you if you did something he didn’t like,” I tell him, then leave the room and head toward the stairs. “Remember that.”

The regret for punching him doesn’t sink in until I’m on the second floor, and when it does, I collapse into a useless heap on the hardwood. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hates me now, especially since he didn’t want me to control him in the first place. My mind is a cacophony of the Ruler and the Trickster arguing over what’s right, and the more I scream at them to shut up, the louder they become.

These are extremes. Neither the Ruler or the Trickster was actually this callous in their time. They have just become so heated with debate, with neither of them getting their way, that they are reverting back to their most core traits, their most violently controversial attitudes. It makes me sick, literally and figuratively. I manage to crawl into my room and lie down on the bed, and as soon as I close my eyes there is peace.

 

Though I am still weak, I’m finding myself finally able to walk about the house. I still can’t leave, and Loki finally agrees with me after seeing my reaction to his “helping.” I have delegated both him and Isaac to be my stand-in. They are not pleased, but I tell them that the conclusion that they come to if they work together will likely be the conclusion I would have come to in the first place. With this knowledge, they both set out to repair the little damage that has been done from my absence.

I have begun cooking for myself again. Things are lonely and depressing without Robin, but at least I’m able to get out of bed most mornings. I continue to explore the grounds, continue to try my hardest to remain in total seclusion, when one day I happen upon the basement again.

I had meant to spend the day trying to use my powers again to close the hole that the rebels had created, but I notice something rather unsettling about it when I find it today. Where it had just been a hole in the vague shape of a rectangle before, dirt thrown all about the room, now it contains small white pieces of something sticking up from the earth. I drop down into the hole, about six feet down, and start brushing away at the pieces. It’s only a few minutes of scuffling and tugging at what has unearthed itself before I pull out a bone fragment, spattered with brown and beige. It’s too large to be any animal that lives around here. On my knees, I keep digging, my fingers feeling a bit raw as I continue, not allowing myself to rest and heal. The sharp edges of the bones catch on my fingertips, slashing them open and spreading their iron-laden seed all through the earth.

As I wipe frantically at the remnants of the human skeleton, I remember what I knew all along. I remember the blood surrounding her head as I took her by the throat and pushed her skull into the floor. I remember the look in her eyes as her consciousness faded, as her life ebbed away from her. I remember the sudden wave of shock at myself, at the horrors I’ve committed, and how I had just added yet another to those I had murdered. I remember scrambling to the bathroom, only just getting there in time to be violently sick. I remember pushing away my actions, pretending they didn’t happen, sitting on the couch with her body and her blood-matted hair before remembering what I’d done and burying her here.

Robin is dead, and this is her skeleton. 

I killed her, who knows how long ago, and replaced her with a figment from my own mind so I would be able to live with myself. I must have copied her a little too closely, though, because the conflict between helping me and taking me down split her in half. The Robin that attacked me was her. The Robin I put in stasis was her. She had both of these parts inside of her, but my own mind’s conflict tore her apart and forced her into two different bodies, both of my own creation. The dark-haired Robin was the product of her rebelliousness and my desire to have opposition. She can’t be read, and I can’t stop her. I don’t know if I can be killed by figments of my own imagination, but I think I’m going to find out very soon.

I look down. There’s blood on my hands. But it’s not just my blood. It’s Robin’s, too, and Loki’s, and the original Thomas whose life I stole. It’s the Council’s blood. Everyone I’ve ever held dear to me has contributed to this, has seen my true darkness. I have ruled unjustly, and I have killed relentlessly. I am the Ruler and the Trickster, but those days are behind me. I need to become something more if I want to survive. The hardest part is, I’m not sure I want to anymore.

I pull myself up out of the pit and close it up behind me with a wave of my bloodstained hand. I’m going to try my damnedest to change my fate that the universe has spelled out for me. If I fail, no one can say I didn’t try. I make my way to the stairs, climbing up and walking back into the kitchen. Loki has the day off, I think, as he’s sitting in the kitchen drinking a cup of herbal tea. He glances over at me, my clothes dirty, my hair frazzled, my hands covered in red. “What on earth happened to you?” he asks, looking concerned again. I hate it when he does that.

“Robin’s dead,” I tell him.

He takes a deep breath and puts down his teacup. “I know,” he responds.

I don’t blame him for not telling me sooner. I probably would’ve called him a liar and pushed the memory away again, or tried to kill him. “You’re dead, too.”

He blinks at me. “No,” he says, shrugging. “I’m as alive as ever.”

“I killed you,” I respond. He laughs, and it chills me to the bone.

“You came close. You could have killed me,” he responds. “But I’m very much alive. Just because you reshaped me to your purposes doesn’t make me _dead,_ Thomas.” He starts laughing again, and it sounds like he used to, borderline maniacal and unabashed. “I’ve always been myself. You never actually killed me. You gave me a free ticket to eternal life.” Loki picks up his teacup, raising it toward me. “A toast to Tasedio. May you reign eternal, may the whole realm sing your name. May you have a long, prosperous life. Isn’t that how the old saying goes?” He cackles, then puts it back down and grins at me, continuing his speech.

“I rather enjoy your presence, at least. I so enjoy your internal monologue, especially. I’ve loved listening in to your thoughts since we first met. You’re just so intriguing. Why do you think I chose you? You masqueraded as me and succeeded while being wholly yourself. I knew you would make it through. Certainly I had to force your hand a few times to ensure our survival, but it was for the best, wasn’t it? You agreed that Roanah deserved to die, don’t lie to me. You wanted Atusiel dead as much as I did. You made me more willing to serve you, but I consider it paying rent for all this time I’ve been in your head.” He stands, wrapping his sinuous arms around my neck and getting in a little closer than I’d prefer. “Didn’t I tell you that Ragnarok would not come for the Liesmith? The end of days has come and gone, and I am still here.” His eyes glimmer, and then his lips are upon mine. My feelings about Loki are mixed, so I do not fight, but I also do not reciprocate. 

He breaks away after a few seconds, then lets go of me, still grinning. “I will continue to serve you,” he tells me, “because I owe you my life. You never dreamed of killing me. You didn’t even know I was real until it was too late. But you were in the right place at the right time, and you never killed me while I was inside your mind at my most vulnerable. For this, and for my immortality, I will serve you until the end of days.” 

I stare at him blankly, unsure of what to say. He smirks, sits back down, and goes back to his tea, knowing he’s shocked me into acceptance that I’m never going to get rid of him, that I enjoy his company too much to stamp out his life even if I could.

I nod at him, wash my hands at the sink, and leave the room.

 

I know that I deserve this rebellion, that I should no longer rule, but I am still making my first media appearance in weeks. It needs to be done. I don’t know where the other Robin is (I’ve taken to calling her Violet, because of her unusual eye color that my subconscious apparently deemed appropriate) and I feel it would be best for me to call her out in order to speak to her. It could result in my death. I’m willing to take that risk.

“Greetings,” I announce. “I would like to announce that I would like to negotiate terms of peace with the rebel leader. I understand that you would like to see me dead. I would rather like to survive, so I would have words. I will not kill you. I will only ask once.”

The broadcast is short. I don’t have much else that I want to talk about right now. Loki looks somewhat pleased as I stalk off. I grab him by the wrist as I go, dragging him along with me. “You told me you aided in the rebellion.”

“And I wasn’t lying,” he replies, “for once.”

“You couldn’t have.” I look back at him, briefly, and he looks confused. “I had you under my thumb. I knew that you were in with the Trickster. I didn’t know how far it went. I hope you know that I don’t trust you any longer. I still know that you won’t have me killed, but you’ll stab me in the back because you think it’s fun. We will not be on the good terms you are used to,” I tell him. He looks like a kicked puppy. “These are the repercussions of your actions. You will have to learn to live with them, just as I have had to learn to live with mine.”

“Sir,” he says, but I let go of his wrist as I disappear back into my home. Or, at least, that’s where I had intended to go. Instead, I seem to be in the middle of the desert. I wonder if my mind falling to pieces has anything to do with this sudden mishap with my powers. A strong wind blows into my face, and I wipe away the dust. I try to teleport again, but end up on a sidewalk I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Others see me and rush toward me, asking what I’m doing here, if they can do anything to help, if they can aid in any way. Before they can mob me and hurt me through their excitedness, I am gone once more, finally reaching my home. This was exhausting, and I don’t like the implications of it, but there’s not much that I can do about it. I lie down on the couch and stare at the ceiling, sighing to myself. Every once in a while, I think I catch a flicker of motion, but I never seem to manage to see what it is before it’s gone.

I’m breaking at the seams, and I think Violet knows this. I think she wants to drive me as far up the wall as she can before she ends me, just to make my existence that much more torturous. I can’t say as I blame her. I deserve this. I deserve to watch my empire crumble at my feet as I scramble and try to keep the peace. I deserve the pain that comes with the loss of lives from the freedom they will receive. I deserve everything I care about in ruin because of the ruinous actions I have taken against society and my kind.

As I think this, my kind turns up on my metaphorical doorstep. The Council is now sitting in my living room, every member looking at me. Hirese and Posurin sit on the cold tile in front of the empty fireplace, Hirese with his arms crossed, Posurin with his fingers steepled and his elbows propped on his knees as he hunches over. Roanah and Atusiel sit uncomfortably next to one another on the other sofa, trying to get as opposite as they can. Arasen sits on the floor, her legs out in front of her. Lanadel is lounging in the only armchair, her legs crossed at the knee. “What?” I ask the hallucinations. “What are you here for? What do you want from me?” I don’t sit up.

“I’ll never understand you,” Lanadel says, rolling her eyes. “You call us all up, then ask us what we’re here for. You’re the one who needed us.”

Posurin nods. “She is right, Tasedio. You called upon us for help, whether you realize it or not. As it would appear,” he says as I hear the front door shut, “you called out to everyone in your mind for help without realizing it. This is quite peculiar.” Loki enters the room, smirking at Roanah as he sits on the armrest of my sofa. Posurin shoots a glare at him, but Loki ignores it. “At any rate,” the Mediator continues, “we are not certain why you are crying out for aid, only that you are. We are at your beck and call, after all.” Atusiel grumbles about this. I know he hates it, but I have even more problems with allowing him to roam free than Loki. He’s usually locked up pretty tightly in my head just so I can be certain he’s not influencing any of my thoughts, so him being out here, physical, just _existing_ seems a bit odd.

It doesn’t take Isaac much longer to enter the room as well, and when he does, it’s everyone but Robin that I’ve got inside my head just hanging out in my living room. I’ve sat up by now, and Isaac has taken a seat next to me and has decided to rest his head on my arm. No one seems quite sure how to feel about him. I suppose I don’t blame them. Most of them have had enough time to form a judgment about Loki, but it takes us a notoriously long time to figure out who someone is, and they’ve only known Isaac for a few weeks. I came up with him, and I’m not even sure what all goes on in his head. He seems to like me, though, so I’m not going to question it.

“Now that everyone’s here,” Posurin announces, “what exactly is it that you wanted help with?”

“I’m so lost,” I announce quietly. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know how to continue ruling with the split in Robin. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go on, I don’t know how I’m supposed to survive. I just… I’m lost.” I let my shoulders sag as I look down at the floor and shuffle my feet on the rug below the couch. “I need help.”

“Well, now that you’ve admitted it, we can actually start to help you,” Posurin says, smiling at me. “I would suggest trying to conjure her up. Perhaps if you tap into your subconscious, you can transport her here.” I focus on the inner workings of my mind, on the deepest thoughts I can register having, but it doesn’t help. Nothing comes up. I shake my head, and Lanadel makes a sort of _huff_ ing noise.

“Of course he can’t access his subconscious, Posurin, it’s subconscious. We can get in there, if you allow us, and we can draw her out.” I stare at her, and I can’t tell if she’s lying or telling the truth, so I shake my head.

“I can’t trust anyone in there,” I tell them. “Not even me, really. I don’t know what goes on in there. I don’t know if that’s how I’ve lived so long, on some brain function I don’t understand. I don’t want anyone going back there and messing with who I am or anything that’s going on.”

Posurin blinks, and Arasen looks upset. “You don’t trust me? Why not?”

I look straight at her and shake my head. “I can’t. Someone else might slip in after you. I’m sorry.” The silence is charged as we continue to sit, no answer forthcoming from anyone. “Are there any other ideas? I need to do something about this situation. I can’t just let it sit as is. I could die if this doesn’t go correctly.”

“Oh, and how bad that’d be,” Atusiel says, sneering. “You’d just be in someone else’s head. What a problem that would be, dying after you thought you couldn’t. You’re not afraid of it, are you?” His grin makes me shiver, and I can already feel him starting to process the information, to sort my fears into commands he can use against me. It’s only moments before he spits out, “ _Tasedio. Kill yourself.”_

This had never worked before, so I’m not entirely certain why my mind decides that it should take this command to heart now. I feel my entire head go numb, watch my own body stand up and walk to the kitchen even as someone clings to my left leg. I have a knife and I don’t know where it came from, but it’s pointed at me. I can hear Atusiel talking, but I don’t know what he’s saying, and I’m moments away from gutting myself when there’s a flash of heat and light and I don’t feel anything for a while.

 

I wake up on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood with a knife stuck in my shoulder and a throbbing in my head. I take out the knife first, rotating my shoulder to try and get some feeling back into it. After putting the blade down, I rub the back of my head and find a bit of blood there as well. This is an absolute mess. I’ve got to clean it up as soon as I figure out what’s gone on. I drop the knife in the sink and throw back my shoulders, trying to stretch as much as I can.

“Alright,” I say, finally, “what just happened?” Everyone still seems to be manifesting externally, so an answer shouldn’t be that hard. I walk into the living room and find everyone huddled around something on the carpet, save for Atusiel who is lying on the couch with his eyes closed. Arasen looks toward me, then waves me over with a worried countenance. I give one last glance at Atusiel before walking over to the carpet.

Isaac is curled up on the floor, not making a sound. I can’t tell whether he’s breathing or not, but I can see bruises starting to blossom on him, scratches, and he might have a broken rib or two. I push my way through them, glaring at everyone who chose only to stare, and sit him up. “Isaac,” I say, “can you hear me?” I take his arm and feel for a pulse. I don’t find anything, but I don’t know where to look on a construct of mine, so I try again with a hand on his neck. It’s faint, but I can feel a slight pulsing. Hugging him close to me, I use all the energy I can muster to right his body, to change it back to how it used to be. Now that I’m touching him, I can tell there’s all sorts of things wrong with him. He feels like someone’s just tried to beat him to death. He lets out a small cry of pain, and I stroke his hair. “It’s going to be okay.”

Loki crouches down with me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “I did all I could,” he says, “but it wasn’t much. I got Atusiel to stop turning the rest against him. That’s all I could manage. He never thought I was important enough to control, at least not before I got him back.”

“I appreciate it,” I tell him. “But why would he do this?”

“He knows that by hurting Isaac, he is hurting the Ruler,” Loki tells me. “Because the Ruler isn’t him. He’s jealous. He wanted to rule the way you do now, and you’ve taken that from him. The only thing he ever wanted, and the Trickster gets to do it in lieu of the Commander. I can’t blame him for being jealous, but his actions are unacceptable.”

“Seems to run in the family,” I reply.

Loki gives me an odd look. “You’ve never referred to the Council as your family before.”

“They’re the closest thing I have to it,” I tell him. “We’ve got a similar biological makeup.”

“You’re the same race, not the same family,” Loki replies. “The Ruler and the Trickster are more family to you than they are. They’re like your belligerent brothers who never shut up and won’t stop wrecking one another’s things.”

“What?” I ask.

“The Trickster is the oldest,” Loki starts, “and he’s the free-spirited one who doesn’t want to follow in anyone’s footsteps, the one that gets protective when things happen to you but in the same breath knocks down your block tower. The Ruler is the middle child who didn’t get the attention he wanted, so now he’s aspiring to be better than anyone and everything, ruling it all so he can be acknowledged. And you’re the baby, the one that just wants everyone to get along and to help each other.” He smiles. “It’s that simple. You and Atusiel are both of the Council, but that does not make you brothers any more than I am Robin’s brother.”

I shrug. “Okay. At any rate, I want to know what specifically happened. I know that Atusiel tried something, but you haven’t told me what.” Isaac stirs under my hand, and I continue to gently stroke his hair in an effort to soothe him. Loki shakes his head.

“Not much other than what I’ve said. Isaac was clinging to your leg, trying to get you to stop. You were about to do it when Isaac—you know that he does that… thing with the lights? Well, he cast one of them onto you and knocked you in the back of the head with it. It went through your head and stuck, and you went down. The knife dropped near you, and Atusiel stuck it in you to try to finish the job, but it didn’t do much. Perhaps that’s why your mind allowed it. It knew that he couldn’t actually do anything to you. Or perhaps it was your own desire. I do not know. Anyway. Isaac tried to defend you, to keep you safe, and Atusiel commanded others—Roanah, Hirese, even Arasen—to take care of him. They couldn’t help themselves.” The aforementioned three look incredibly remorseful. “Since I got inside your head, I’ve been able to use names, so I put Atusiel out. I got the rest of them off of Isaac and took him in here. I don’t know how to heal, though, so I was a bit useless on that front. I’ll clean up the blood if you want,” he offers, but I shake my head.

“I can do it. I’ll probably have more time than you.” Shrugging, I hug Isaac a little tighter. “Right now, my priority is making sure Isaac is okay. We can live with a little blood in the kitchen.”

Loki looks at the floor. “I’m sorry that none of us helped you with your crisis.”

I look at him, frowning. “Loki, you all helped me to realize exactly what I need to do. I just hope that the rebel leader will show up so that we can negotiate how she plans on going about it. I need to step down. I obviously can’t rule if things are like this. I can’t rule if someone like Atusiel is in my head, possibly influencing my actions.” As I say this, Isaac starts shivering and crying. “It’s alright, Isaac. I’m not going to die,” I tell him. “I’m not going to die.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says. “I don’t want the world to hurt. I don’t want them to start killing each other again. I don’t want the wars and the abuse and the bullying and all the pain.” He’s sobbing now, and I try to rub his shoulders comfortingly. “I don’t want them to have free will if it means they’re going to be at each other’s throats. Does that make sense? That’s why I like the Ruler. He doesn’t do it because he wants the glory like Atusiel. He wants people to stop hurting. He wants people to stop wrecking themselves. He wants… he wants a world that isn’t cruel. He wants peace just as much as you do, Thomas.” He clings to the front of my shirt, sobs wracking his small body. “He just wants us all to stop hurting. Please, please don’t undo that.”

As the Council fades behind me, it occurs to me that I still haven’t come to a conclusion. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Isaac,” I tell him. “I don’t know.”


	8. 'Cause I've made a mess of myself on my own

I’m scared of what’s going to happen to me.

I go to bed that night knowing full well that I’ve called upon Violet, that she will find me and possibly kill me tonight. Then again, I’ve come in a close scrape with death today already, so I think I’m doing pretty well, all things considered. I take a deep breath as I slip under the covers alone, closing my eyes and letting the darkness close in around me.

My eyes snap open when I sense something else in the room, but I can’t tell what it is. I bolt upright, breaking into a cold sweat, and look around. There’s no one there. I blink a few times, then lie back down and close my eyes again. I sense something again, open my eyes, sit upright, look around, lay back down for an hour and a half before I grow too exhausted to open my eyes when I sense a presence once more. They stay closed, and I slip into a sleep that isn’t quite as restful as I would like.

I can feel my own thrashing through the night, and my muscles remain tense even as my thoughts wander. I jolt awake several times to an empty room. I clutch a pillow in desperation, missing Robin dearly. I cry out into the night, shivering and shaking even as I do.

Finally, as the digital clock glares 3:14 at me in bright red, I look at the foot of my bed and find Violet sitting there. She’s looking away from me, her legs dangling from the side, and she’s smiling like she knows something that I don’t. She turns toward me, and I scrunch up against the headboard, bringing my covers with me. She looks me over, then smirks, shaking her head. Curled up on the bed under her scrutiny with only a blanket as a barrier, I realize that it has been a very long time—decades, probably—since I have felt so lost and needy, and centuries if not millennia since I have felt so small.

“I wondered how long it’d be until you called me,” she says, and I shiver. “I had a feeling you’d want to find me after you found my body in the basement.” She’s gone, then I blink and she’s directly in front of me, staring me straight in the face. She’s all I can see. I try to move further back, but my back meets the wood. She can feel my fear. “I don’t scare you, do I?” Her grin is toothy, devious, something I would expect to see on Loki’s face, not Robin’s. She seems giddy that she’s making me uncomfortable.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper, and she sits back on the bed, giving me just enough space. Her shoulders shrug, and she tips her head to the side.

“Know thine enemy,” she says, and her eyes are cold.

I shake my head. “I don’t want to be your enemy.”

“No, but you can’t help it, can you? You can’t help but be against what I’m suggesting. You want peace. You want complacency. You’re no longer the Trickster you once were, are you? Are you even truly worthy of bearing the name Tasedio?” She grins again, throwing her legs off the side of the bed as she lies back. “Yet you’re not worthy of the name Keiulen, either. You’re not doubtless. You don’t think you’re doing the right thing. You’re trying not to polarize yourself. But who does that make you?” She turns her head toward me. “Do you even know?”

Blinking, I look down at my knees. “No.”

“I didn’t think so,” she says. “I have an inkling. I’m going to try to make this as painless as possible for both of us, but I’d rather just talk for a little bit first.” Violet smiles at me, and this time it’s not the same terrifying grin she’s been doing. “Like we used to, you know? Back when I was actually your counterbalance—or, at least, I was the Ruler’s counterbalance. I’d like to try that out for a little bit.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “I recall you arguing with his methods, but I’m too impartial to him to debate what he’s done any further.”

“I can debate what you’re doing with you,” she replies. “You’re keeping billions of people mentally imprisoned under your thumb and haven’t given any indication of stopping. Discuss.”

“You’re acting like I don’t feel bad,” I snap. “I feel awful about doing this, and I try to give the people as much free will as I can. I fantasize about being overthrown. Why do you think Loki’s grown so rebellious? But I don’t have the heart. I know what people do when they’re let go, when they’re allowed to use their free will. They kill each other. They lie, cheat, steal, and bully. They’ll tear out one another’s throats for a small sum of money. They’re greedy and selfish. They’re peaceful like this. They don’t do things like this. They help each other and they live in absolute harmony.”

“Is it worth it?” she asks. “Do you have so little faith that we can keep ourselves together that you won’t even give us the chance?”

“The humans have already proven that they cannot handle free will,” I tell her. “I’ve tried it before. I thought they could do it. Three days, and there was a serial murder.”

She scoffs. “Then why not just control those people?”

“Everyone has that potential.” I shake my head. “Everyone has the potential for cruelty. I can’t risk it.”

“Not even if it means killing free will to do it?” she asks, and I shrug.

“There’s not much else as far as choice goes. If I keep them imprisoned, they have happiness in slavery. If I let them free, they will take their newfound will and wage wars on one another, slaughtering each other. What is a ruler to do? My empire is toppling thanks to you, and I don’t know what the people are going to do when it’s in ruin. The Ruler set this up so that if I fell, so would everyone else. Do you have a solution for that? Some sort of phoenix metaphor where you have a civilization rise from the ashes of my burned cities? I do hope you’ve got something better.”

Violet laughs, cackling on the bed. “I’ve got some idea. I don’t want to tell you, because then you’d do it yourself. You need to experience a loss of control. You need to have faith that the right thing will happen if you make the right choice.” She hits my leg with the back of her hand. “You’re not all bad, you know. You are the Creator. The humans are your creation. You’re the medium and the balance. You just want what’s best for the people. But you can’t do it. For all your strength, you’re not the person that can make this change. You’ve got too much on your mind and in it, too. Somebody would try to stop it all. Might be Atusiel. Might be Keiulen. Who knows. That’s why I’ve got to take you down. You need for your enemy to have a face.” She gives me a rueful smile, then taps her nose. “It’s easier for you that way. You can put all your conflict into a singular source. It’ll help clear out your mind. You’ll make better decisions if you don’t internalize all this shit.”

“So what’s the choice I have to make?” I ask. “You said that I had to have faith, but if I don’t even know my choices, how am I supposed to carry this out?” She shakes her head, sits in the silence for a few moments, then speaks.

“It’s not time for that yet. I’ll tell you before I leave, I promise.” She holds up a hand. “And I may ally with the Trickster, but I don’t lie.”

Against my better judgment, I trust her. “Alright. What else did you want to discuss?”

“My existence,” she says. “You wanted someone to oppose you, and your subconscious thought it would be best if it split Robin into someone to love and support you, and someone to critically judge your actions. Hence, me, and your dearly beloved that’s sitting around in stasis right now. Discuss.”

I shake my head. “You’re both my dearly beloved. I wish you hadn’t split. I wish I didn’t have to choose. I need a counterbalance for both, and I need someone that makes me feel less alone in the middle of the night.”

“You could always have Loki,” she suggests, smirking. “I bet he’s warm. God of fire and all that shit.”

I take a moment to think about this. “Maybe. I guess we have been close for a long time.”

“He likes you a lot,” Violet replies, “and he’s not so much like family to you as he is a close friend. Not like the Ruler and the Trickster, am I right? He and Isaac seem like brothers, but you and Loki don’t. You’ve been roommates since 800 AD. Haven’t you ever considered that you might be a little more than that?”

I look at my knees again. “Well, now I feel even worse.”

Smiling, she snorts. “That’s my job. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that your inner brain thought it should split your wife in two in order to give you opposition, to stimulate the conflict on both ends. I was a pretty good medium when I was alive and whole before the Ruler wrecked my brain and all, but hey, I think that’s part of the lesson we’re learning here. Brain-wrecking doesn’t solve everything. You’re still wracked with guilt. And yeah, it was the Trickster that killed me, but now it’s you that’s in control, and you have to do something about it.” She gives me a questioning look. “So what are you going to do? You’ve got pressure on both sides to change. You’ve got to do something. So whose side are you going to take?”

“Both are inherently flawed,” I tell her, and she shakes her head with a smile.

“You know the answer already,” she responds. “We’ve talked about romances and counterbalances and all sorts of junk like that. Now, it’s time to get down to serious business.” She looks at me, her glare intense as she moves toward me and pins me to the headboard by the wrists. “You can’t save everyone. You can’t do everything and mediate the entire world forever and expect it all to be peachy-keen. So. Here’s your ultimatum.” Her voice is a hiss when it comes out again, feral and bone-chilling. “You can let your empire fall around you. You can let it burn at my hand. I will destroy all your hard work. I will raze your crops and kill your people. I will tear apart everything you have ever worked for, and you will have to watch from your tower as I do it.” 

Her eyes glimmer, then she continues. “Or, you can sleep. You can allow the people their free will until such a time when they cannot handle it anymore. If they can handle it for the rest of the existence of their species, you will be asleep for the rest of eternity. You will be so deeply asleep that a bomb dropping ten feet above you could not wake you. It removes you from the equation entirely—you will likely never interact with your people again—but they will be happy.”

I look at her and nod. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“I didn’t think you could make the decision right off the bat,” she replies with a grin. “Not with all you can do.” With that, she’s gone, and I’m left alone with my thoughts.

I’ve needed sleep for a very long time, and this is the rest I was looking for, but at the same time, I would never be able to see the world again. I could rebuild my empire from the ground up if I had to. I could resurrect the fallen, could rebuild everything that was torn down. I could even erase Violet from existence, if I needed to, if it were desperate enough. If I thought she was truly going to hurt people, I could wipe her from the face of the earth. But that would unbalance things, giving more power to the Ruler. I don’t know quite what I want to do. I’m being selfish, certainly. It’s what I’m used to. I don’t want to have to go an eternity without seeing the humans again. I love them so dearly and I want them to survive well without me, but I don’t want to risk this for my own personal reasons.

I call out for Loki with my mind, and I hear him trudging wearily up the stairs. “Yes, sir?” he asks, opening my door. There are still heavy bags under his eyes, and his hair is a bird’s nest. I beckon to him, and he steps forward, looking at the ground. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“Do you have feelings for me?” I ask, and he keeps staring at the wood below us. I pat the bed beside me. “You don’t need to sleep on the couch, you know. I like you, Loki. Maybe you made the Trickster anxious, and maybe you made the Ruler resent you, but I like you. I… like you quite a lot, actually.” I smile at him, and he smiles back. He walks around the bed to the area I’ve patted, then slowly lets himself up onto the covers and tries not to disturb the blankets as he places his head rigidly on the pillow, his body flat as a board. “You can relax, you know,” I tell him. “You can actually get comfortable. I’m not going to kick you out at any moment.”

He looks at me, gratitude in his eyes as he starts to burrow under the covers. “I didn’t like the Trickster as much, anyway,” he whispers. “Or the Ruler. I was always afraid that the Trickster would try to kill me, or the Ruler would try to chain me up and lock me away. You’re… you’re much safer to be with.” He gets close to me, putting his head on my chest, and he looks absolutely content. I’m glad I can make him feel good, at least. I put my arms around him, and it’s not long before I fall asleep, finally managing to drift off for the rest of the night.

 

I wake up a few hours later with Loki still sound asleep on my chest. I actually feel rested, despite having only gotten three hours of sleep. I curl up a little closer to him, feeling more at peace than I can remember being in a very long time. Maybe this is what Violet meant. I love both halves of Robin dearly, but they don’t balance me out the way Loki does. This is the most confusing relationship I’ve ever been in, but I’m okay with that. I’m content to not ask questions about it and just exist for a while. I have decisions to make about what I want to do with the world, but for now, Loki can stay on my chest, appearing as peaceful as I feel.

It takes him another fifteen minutes to wake, but when he does he’s quite alert. Sitting up, he smiles at me. “Thank you,” he says, giving me a nod. “I presume this was only for the night. Will you be attempting to put Robin back together after this?”

I shake my head. “No. The Ruler and the Trickster are better off this way, and I think she is too, without having conflicting thoughts within herself to try and muddle through. Violet is certainly interesting, and I respect her a great deal and love her very much, but… her purpose in life is not to be my love interest,” I tell him, shrugging. “She’s meant for more than that. They both are. Frankly, I think you balance me far better than either of them do.”

Loki appears shocked. “Really? I mean, I… I just… I’d always thought that you two were perfect for each other. I thought you… loved her and such. Couldn’t live without her. Had to have someone that didn’t agree with you, or whatever.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “I do love her, Loki. It’s confusing, I know. But the Ruler and the Trickster both get facets of Robin, and they’re the ones that need them most. They disagree with each other enough that they need someone to support them—and in a sense, they’ve got two people. Me, I need someone, but the old Robin wants the same things as I do. She doesn’t balance me out. I mean, the Trickster would need a new ally, but I could pretty easily just take the part of you that exists mostly for rebellion—the god in you, I suppose—and give that to him. You’re starting to fragment anyway. It’d be better to just make a clean cut and let you go as you will.”

Loki looks at his legs, still tucked under the blanket. “So part of me would be helping him, being the counter to Isaac.”

“Yes, but you would also be allied with me in a sense. You know how it is. It’d be easier for me to just combine Isaac and his fragment, or let them continue existing as they do. Yours is a bit more of a fracture, so it’d be better to split you and put you in two different bodies. Does that make sense?”

“So I’d be cut,” he says, “into my… ‘mortal’ self and my ‘god’ self. My ‘mortal’ self would be with you, and my ‘god’ self would still respect you but would instead ally himself more strongly with the Trickster. Is that where this is going?”

“Yes,” I tell him.

“What will we call them?” he asks. “I mean, we can’t just call them both Loki. That’s absurd.”

I smile, patting him on the shoulder. “I was thinking neither one should be called Loki, personally.” He looks confused, so I continue. “After all, people do still know that Loki was an ancient god, and they might react badly to having him as the head of their media. God of lies and all.” I smile. “I was thinking we could make it thinly veiled—something that is obvious if we know you, but otherwise sounds normal—Lucas, perhaps?” He grins, and I know he likes the name. “Good. And the other… I don’t know, Ethan seems appropriate. And if we ever need to come up with a last name for any reason, we can pretend that you two and Isaac are all brothers. Yeah? Does that sound fair?”

He thinks about it for a while. “So… every facet of you gets a balancer that you’re romantically involved with and someone who works with you—you get two, but that’s because you’re the balance to bring it all together.”

“Exactly.” I grin. He looks at me strangely.

“How are you going to handle Violet’s plan, then? I mean, she did tell me something about it. She told me the ultimatum. I don’t understand how you plan to work through that.” I shrug.

“Haven’t thought about it yet. I’d like to make sure everything is sorted through first.”

Loki shakes his head. “You should probably do the split soon. Lucas will need to leave for work.” I nod, curling up next to Loki and taking his head in my hands, touching his forehead to mine. I find the jagged fractures in his mind, the places where the mortal breaks from the god, and I take them apart, rounding off the edges where they fragmented, fleshing them out as a whole, and separating them into two whole beings. I bring another body into being on the floor next to us, then toss the consciousness of Lucas inside. I let him reshape his appearance as he will, and allow Ethan to do the same. I close my eyes, waiting for one of them to speak.

“Sir,” Lucas says, and I flip over before opening my eyes. “I really must be going.” He has the same long, frazzled hair I’m used to, but it’s a bright red like it used to be. His manner of dress is pristine, yet eclectic in a way I’m not sure how to describe. His voice is as sweet as I remember it being a thousand years ago, and his eyes flash a bright green when he looks at me with a grin, bowing. Then he’s gone. 

I feel Ethan’s arm slip around my waist, and I turn toward him. His eyes are a bit murkier and less distinct in color, closer to grey-green-blue, but they’re still sparkling with hope and affection. His hair is black as it was just before the split, but it’s much shorter, only reaching a bit down his neck, and his face is less sharp and severe than it once was. He’s still in his pajamas as he nuzzles into my chest. “This is amazing,” he says. “There’s no more conflict about who I should be grating against me.”

“Good to hear,” I tell him. “I’m glad things are working out for you.”

He doesn’t say anything more as we lay in bed for the better part of half an hour. Dawn is creeping up on the horizon, and his breathing is starting to even out. I think he’s falling asleep. Realizing I don’t know a whole lot about him as a person, I pop in on his mind, viewing things as he does. He feels safe, needed like he never has before, and that’s something he’s always seemed to want, at least in this part of him. He’s very comfortable and doesn’t seem to want to go anywhere or do anything exciting for a while. I pity him in a way. I don’t know when Violet will be returning, but I do know that I don’t have long to make my decision.

I don’t know what to do, and I think everyone knows by now. I’m not really the Creator, not yet. I’m still technically the Ruler, despite my differing attitude. Until something happens—that is, until I am forced to rebuild society, or until I give it up—I will remain the Ruler, and that eats away at me like acid in my veins. I need to release Robin from stasis, but I can’t do that yet. I need her advice, but at the same time, I don’t know what I’d even ask. After all, would she still be devoted to me? Or would she be inclined toward the Ruler, bent on suppressing me and making sure I don’t let their empire fall into ruin? I’d like to think it would be the former, but I can’t know for certain. I’ll have to find out sooner or later, but I need to wait. I need to make sure that Lucas and Ethan are going to function properly before I try to do anything like waking up Robin and the like. I also need to make sure Isaac is recuperating.

Isaac. I realize I’ve forgotten to check on him since I went to bed. I whisper the Lullaby in Ethan’s ear to make sure he’s not disturbed when I swing my legs off the bed and make my way downstairs to the couch where Isaac has taken to sleeping. He stirs as I approach, sitting up with a smile on his face. “Good morning, sir,” he says, blinking at me as he rubs at his eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you down here this early.”

“I thought it would be a good idea to check up on you,” I tell him. “Are you doing any better?”

“I’m doing much better, friend.” He pokes gingerly at his ribcage on the right side of his body. “Though… there are still improvements to be made. I hope I never have to meet with Atusiel again. He is… not my friend.” The boy shakes his head, and it hits me how much he must dislike Atusiel in order to not consider him a friend. “He is mean, and he’s dumb and jealous of the Ruler. I don’t like him.” He looks at the floor, frowning.

“You don’t have to like him,” I tell Isaac. “I don’t like him either. None of us do. It’s alright. He’s really mean.” Isaac smiles, then looks at me for a while, curiosity in his eyes.

“Did you split Loki?” he asks, and I blink at him.

“How did you know?”

“It smells better in here,” he says with a shrug. “Like there’s not a fracture happening anymore. Like there are, instead, two wholes. I like it. What are they here for, though?”

I sit down in the chair opposite him. “Well, Lucas—the deific portion—is still running the media. He’s like you, but likes the Trickster instead of the Ruler. He still helps me, though, so it’s okay.” Isaac looks a little distraught, but nods as I continue. “Then there’s Ethan—a bit younger, pseudo-mortal, and he’s my counterbalance—much like Robin once was intended to be, but when she split, I was left with no one.”

He cocks his head to the side. “Why not just combine the two Robins, friend?” I chuckle a little.

“Because they were too much like me when combined. They wanted the same sorts of things as me when she was herself and whole. I need someone that isn’t like me. Someone a bit less introspective, someone a bit more high-energy and reckless that can bring out some life in me.” Isaac nods again.

“So I’m a memetic plague given form, Lucas is an ancient god, and Ethan is a mental construct with no powers, sir?”

I nod. “Yes. You’re brothers of a sort. You don’t all need to get along, but you happen to do so well enough that you function when you work together. I’m happy to have the three of you helping me to work out what needs to be done.” Isaac grins.

“So are you keeping the empire together, sir?” he asks, and I sink into the couch.

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” Isaac says, scooting closer to me, “friend, no matter what you do, I think it will be the right choice. I have faith that you will not lead us wrong, or that you will leave us to flounder on our own, leaving suddenly with no plans for the future. I have faith that you will do what is right when it is the right time. You are the Creator, after all.”

“Not yet,” I say, “but I appreciate the support.”

Isaac smiles again, nods again, and curls back up on the couch. “I am sorry, friend, but I need rest so that I can be strong again. My body is healing quickly, but it still takes time. I think you need rest, too. Please, sir, go back to bed.” I nod to myself, yawning. I am still tired, despite getting some of the best rest of my life. I think it might be a part of my condition now—I’m always tired.

I trudge back up the stairs into my room, where Ethan lies peacefully upon the mattress, his hand resting on a pillow where it was formerly on my chest. I crawl back into bed with him, gently pressing my form against his, and letting my eyes close so perhaps I might catch even just a bit more sleep.

I wake to the sound of a heartbeat.

If I decided to continue to lie there, it would probably send me back to sleep, but I open my eyes instead. I can feel fingers running through my hair. My arms are around someone. I think it’s Ethan. A glance upward confirms my belief, and he smiles at me. “Did you sleep well?” he asks, and I nod.

“Yes, it was quite good. I feel a little more rested than I did before.” I stretch, but my muscles are still exhausted. My mind is running much better than it was before, though, so at least there’s that. I yawn, then sit up and look at him. “Did you?”

“Like an inanimate object,” he replies with a grin. “Not a movement that I can remember. You, on the other hand,” he says, his look replaced with one of worry, “seemed to be having a fit. I don’t know what to do about it, but something should definitely be done about it.”

“Ideally, yes,” I reply. “Realistically, there’s nothing that can be done. I don’t even know who would begin to be able to help me in that respect. Isaac can’t, and I don’t think anyone else with the ability to influence minds could do so, either. It seems to be something far deeper than that, something that I just don’t understand.”

“Speaking of which,” he says, “can you teach me how to cast spells? I mean, I’m… not Loki anymore, so I don’t remember. All of that went into Lucas.”

“You mean in _Reisuseln_?” I ask him, and he nods. 

“I know that Lucas had the knowledge of his original spellcraft, but I don’t know what happened to _Reisuseln._ I think it might’ve been something that fell through the cracks, one that didn’t end up with either of us. It’d be really nice if you could help me learn again. I’d really like to be able to communicate with you in your native language, and it’s primed for that sort of thing, so I thought it would just be all-around a good idea for me to learn.”

“Certainly,” I tell him, “but not right now. Perhaps someday soon. It depends on how things go. Negotiations with Violet and such.”

He looks a little crestfallen, but nods. “Hey,” I say, and he looks up at me. “If she hasn’t shown by the end of the week, and I still haven’t made up my mind on what I want to do, I’ll teach you on Saturday, alright?” He nods eagerly, grinning.

“Thank you,” he says. “Now… Lucas has the schedule for what you’re supposed to do. Did he tell you anything?”

“I would hope not,” I reply. “Not with all this weighing down on me. I need to make sure that Isaac recuperates. I need to make sure that you two are handling the split properly. I need to decide what I’m going to do with this empire. I need to clear my head.” I look down. “There’s absolutely no way I could do that if he were trying to get me to do a broadcast or boost morale or do something bureaucratic.”

“No, I suppose not,” Ethan says. “How is Isaac doing, anyway?”

“He’s getting better,” I tell him. “I think he’ll be alright.”

“I’m glad.” He nods a little, then pauses. “What’s going to happen to us?”

I blink. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, specifically for me,” he says, a little nervous, “what’s going to happen if you’re killed, or if something bad happens to you? You made me just for you. What am I supposed to do if you’re… if you’re…” He gets a little shaky, his breathing quivering. “If you’re… Please. Please don’t let anything happen to you, okay?” He clings to the front of my nightshirt.

“Ethan, I can’t die,” I tell him with a small laugh. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“I know that… that bit. Where she wants you to go to sleep. I’ve heard your worries. You don’t think you’ll ever wake up again.” He looks so hurt, so defensive. “I’d start a war myself if it would bring you back to me.”

“Don’t,” I say, pointing at him with a frown. “Don’t do that. That’s going against everything I’m working for. The people need their freedom. I don’t think I can be the one to give it to them.” 

He practically shrieks, pulling me down onto the bed. “You’ve been listening too hard to Violet’s propaganda bullshit,” he breathes. “Don’t do this just because of her. Don’t do this just because she’s threatening you if you don’t. That’s how terrorism works.”

“I’m not doing it just because she wants me to,” I tell him, shaking my head. “I don’t even know if I’m doing it at all. But I don’t have that much faith in the humans. I don’t think they’d be able to last eternity without waging a war that’ll threaten to tear them asunder. I don’t think they’ll be able to survive for more than a few centuries at this rate without me intervening every once in a while.” I stroke his hair a little and sit up again. “It’s alright, Ethan. I’m not going to just up and make this decision lightly.”

Ethan gets himself close to me again, nodding against my chest. “Okay. I trust you. I’m just scared, you know? I mean, I can’t imagine how any of us would survive without you, since we’re all intrinsically tied to you. It’s just… it’s scary.”

I note that this is probably where Loki’s survival instinct went, where his idea to cling to me in order to survive the end times came from. This raw desperation is very interesting, and I understand where he’s coming from. I just worry that it might be difficult for him to go on if I do need to do something drastic. I stroke his hair, making small noises to soothe him. “It’s alright,” I tell him. “It’ll be okay. _Arilin renn.”_ The situation is acceptable. It’s the closest thing _Reisuseln_ has to “it’s going to be okay,” and I’ve heard it many times over the course of my life when I thought things were going to break down around me. I think it’ll help him, even if he doesn’t quite understand me. Ethan relaxes a little, nodding at me.

“I wish I knew what that meant,” he says, his voice a little dreamy. I scratch his head a little, and he smiles. “I wish I could get the chance to learn all of it. You know? I just want to feel it on my tongue.”

“It’s a good language for that,” I reply. “It’s very good for that sort of thing. It’s one of the greatest for magic since it gets close to the things that make the universe work.”

“So then why couldn’t you have just replicated what the Council did with magic? Instead of, you know.” I shake my head.

“I don’t know. _Reisuseln_ is very particular. I’m not even quite sure what happened to them,” I reply. “I may have absorbed their _reisuseln_ —their name, their ‘soul word,’ if you will, since this is a language of names, and that’s what gave me their powers. I don’t know. I could do more research on it, but that would require me… well, being alive for a hundred more years without ever interacting with anyone, and I think I’d go absolutely bonkers if I were to do that.”

“Bits and pieces, though,” Ethan suggests, “in your down time, I think would be more productive than, say, housekeeping.” He laughs, and I laugh with him, genuine, unabashededly allowing myself to feel the vibrations through my being for the first time in a long time. I think this might be able to turn out alright. I think that this could all be good for everyone in the end. I don’t know how, and I don’t know what it’ll take to get there, but I am dedicated to achieving the greatest good for the greatest number without excluding my own needs. “I don’t think you’d ever much liked that you had to do it, did you?”

“Not really, but it’d be a lot easier with you helping me, anyway,” I tell him, and he smiles.


	9. And now I am on my face, and I'm calling out your name

I wish I could spend all of my time teaching Ethan some of the basics about _Reisuseln_. I love seeing his face light up when he understands a concept, but I’ve promised myself that I won’t teach him any of the language, much less the spellcraft, until I have dealt with Robin. I have taught him some of the grammatical quirks, though. I thought it would be good to get him started at some point.

Now, though, I’m working on moving forward. I want to let Robin out of stasis so that I can see what she thinks of the situation, what input she has, how she feels. I think she’ll have the most rational opinion out of anyone if I let her acclimate to being awake and herself again. Sure, she’ll probably have some sort of subservient bent, but I think I can filter through that and hear out what she has to say.

Lucas bows to me as I enter the building. “Good morning, sir,” he says, a mischievous gleam in his eyes that I’ve sorely missed. “Is there anything I can do for you? Would you like tea, coffee, any sort of beverage?” It comes out practiced, like he’s been doing this for years, but it contains a sharp edge of sarcasm and a toothy grin to match it. It comes to surprise him, then, when I give my answer.

“Actually, you can do something for me,” I respond. “Do you recall when I asked you to put up the barriers in the back stasis chamber?”

“No,” he says, raising an eyebrow at me. “Should I?”

I shake my head and grin. “No. I need you to take them down.”

Lucas gives me a chuckle as he shakes his head. “Of course.” He looks down on his tablet and fiddles with a few settings, then looks back up at me. “All finished. Anyone with the proper authorization can enter it once more.”

“Thank you, Lucas,” I respond, and teleport myself to the stasis chamber.

It hasn’t actually been that long since I’ve been in here, but it feels like it’s been an age. Robin is still peaceful in her frozen state, and I smile at her as I tap in the combination necessary to release her. There’s a small hiss of steam, then the bed she’s lying on slides out from the chamber. I turn her mind on again with the metaphorical flick of a switch, waking her from her sleep. She seems refreshed, and I wish I could feel that way anymore. She yawns as she sits up, smiling at me.

“That was a rather nice nap,” she says. “What’s going on? Why was I in stasis?”

“I needed to keep you safe,” I tell her, “but I have faith that the Ruler won’t have any trouble doing that from now on.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding. “I like him quite a bit. I think that’d be alright. Why did you wake me up? Am I not in danger anymore?”

“Well, technically you’re not,” I tell her. “But I don’t know as I’d call you safe at any rate. I actually brought you back up for some… important advice.”

She smiles. “Can we at least go home for it? This is a bit weird, after all, you asking me questions while I’m on a stasis bed.”

“Oh! Of course.” I take her by the hand and teleport her back into our living room, where I sit next to her. “Now, this is very important. You, er… you’ve been split.”

“I know,” she says. “My rebellious half. Split off from me and left. I noticed it was gone.”

“Seems like everyone knew but me,” I grumble. “At any rate. She’s provided me with… let’s use her own terminology and call it an ‘ultimatum.’”

Robin looks at me expectantly. “And?”

Sighing, I continue. “I must either allow my empire to fall into ruin or allow her to put me to sleep until they need me again, which could be thousands of years, or never.”

She frowns, looks at the floor, looks back to me, and gnaws on her lower lip. “Tell me the pros and cons of both. Maybe it’ll help you sort it out.”

I nod. “There’s a few benefits to both and a few solid negatives that I don’t want to happen either way. First, the empire falling. Now, she’s going to kill a lot of people if this is the choice that I make. I can reshape matter. I’m not quite the Creator yet, as I’m still ruling, not creating, but that would make me into the Creator, as I would have to rebuild the whole human race. She’d burn everything to the ground and I could start it all over again and build it however I wanted. I wanted something interesting. I wanted something exciting. I wanted opposition. This would be the way to go if I wanted to satiate those needs.” I take a deep breath, then sink into the couch. “But everyone would die in the process, and I don’t think that’s a choice that I feel comfortable making. That’s the kind of thing the Trickster would do. It’s not an appropriate one for me. I love the humans too much to watch them all burn and know it was me that did it.”

“It might be necessary if you want to start anew,” she says. “And it’s not like you haven’t gotten an entire race killed before, to be frank. Run the other one by me first.”

I wince, making a disdainful noise. “Don’t remind me. Anyway. Option two. I can free the humans and, until they’re at the brink of war and are about to blow each other to smithereens without intervention, I stay asleep for all time. If they never do that, I remain in my sleep for the rest of eternity. If they do need me, they call upon me at the last moment to stop everything and control everyone again to stabilize the situation. Violet—your double, your rebelliousness—seemed to think that was highly unlikely. It’s amazing as far as what the people need goes. It’s everything they need. A ruler when they need one, nothing when they don’t. But I wouldn’t be able to interact with them. I may never wake again at all. It’d be very much like death.” I look down. “And every time I went to sleep again, I would fear that I would never again wake. It’s selfish, yes, but I can’t stop myself from considering my own desires. It is my empire, after all. Does that make sense?” Robin nods, and is about to speak when I say, “Though there is an option three.”

“And what might that be?” she asks.

“That one is the simplest. I kill Violet. It wouldn’t be hard. It’d actually be very simple. It’d unbalance everything, though, and it wouldn’t solve any of my problems. The same problems would continue to persist, I would create a new mental construct to take me down, and then the entire cycle would repeat. It seems like the most viable to my mind right now, though, because it comes at the least risk to me and the humans combined.”

“The Ruler would be highly favored,” she says as she nods. “It would be unbalanced. I suppose I would find that slightly preferable, but I am biased.”

“That you are,” I respond. “I’m glad you can at least acknowledge that. So. What do you think?”

She stays quiet for a little while. “I think you need to think about all the implications of each choice very carefully before you make a decision.”

“I’ve done it several times already,” I tell her, resting my head on her shoulder. “I don’t know what to do. That’s why I’m asking for advice.”

“You’re still the Ruler, aren’t you? You need to make the choice that’s the best in the end for everyone.” She gives me a cryptic smile, and I bury my face in her shoulder, tears starting to leak out of my eyes.

“I can’t do this, Robin.” She puts an arm around me, gently, as though she thinks I’ll break if she touches me in a rough manner. “I’m not qualified to judge what’s best for everyone. I don’t even know what’s best for me.”

“Shh, love,” she tells me, patting me on the back. “It’s alright. Let it out. Get out these emotions so that you can make a more rational decision later, okay?” 

I nod into her shoulder and let myself sob there for who knows how long before I finally calm down. My shoulders ache from the shaking, my face raw and sore from the tears. Robin runs her fingers through my hair like she once did, trying to soothe me, and I try to take deep breaths. It’s hard when each and every one seems to catch in my lungs and make it even harder to go on. It takes me even longer to wind down from my heightened emotional state, and by now I think it’s been somewhere in the realm of an hour and a half. I’m sure Robin is very impatient with me, but she puts on a great mask of passivity.

“Are you a bit better now?” she asks me. I nod, wiping my face.

“How long has it been?”

She glances over at a clock that I hadn’t realized was there. “Fifteen minutes. A new personal record for you, I think. You must be really upset.”

I laugh. “Always feels like longer. Thought I had mourned for a year when Arasen died. Didn’t leave the house. Didn’t eat anything. Didn’t even move for at least what felt like a week. I leave, turns out it’s only been three days.” This makes Robin chuckle as well.

“I know, sweetheart. You showed me. I’d say you’ve never been one to linger on emotion, but it’s more that you always think you’re emotional for much longer than you are.” She ruffles my hair and smiles. “You’re cute. You don’t really get time, and sometimes you don’t really get people, either, but you’re cute anyway.” I give her a lopsided grin in response, and she laughs. “That’s the Tom I know and remember. Come on. You’ve got something going on between your ears,” she says, tapping my head. “Let me hear it. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” I tell her, “that I’ve been thinking about it too much, and that if I’m going to end my rule, I need to do it the way the Trickster would do it. Not—not necessarily by destruction,” I respond to her horrified look, “but in a way that’s indecisive, the sort of thing a ruler wouldn’t do. I’m not going to plan it out. That is, I’m not going to make the decision until she shows up on my doorstep, and I’m not going to think about it until then.” I nod to myself, and steel my resolution. “I’ll make the right decision when the right time comes. Everyone else seems to believe I’m capable of doing the right thing, so I think I’m going to trust myself and believe that whatever is right will appear right to me at the right moment.”

“That’s reckless and irresponsible,” Robin says.

“It’s _Tasedian_ ,” I respond.

She shakes her head, gives a heavy sigh, and smiles.

 

“So,” Ethan says, “now that you’ve got things figured out with Robin, can we start on my lessons?”

I laugh. “Of course. You recall the grammar rules, correct?”

Grinning, Ethan pulls out a spiral notebook. “I’ve been writing everything down. Every last word from your mouth makes it in here—from sentence structure and the placement of words to the relationship between nouns and their modifiers. I’ve even got a page on how important it is to be concise—including the little… mashed word bit that you told me about.”

I laugh. “Yes, and I can finally tell you the word for it, now. It’s ‘ _kellilnselner_ ’—literally means ‘squished or crushed words.’ It’s autological, meaning that it expresses a property that it also has itself. The word for ‘crushed words,’ the one that denotes that a word is two words mashed together, is itself a word made up of two other words, much like a compound word in English. In this example, it’s ‘ _kelliln_ ,’ which is the past tense of ‘ _kell_ ,’ to smash or crush, and ‘ _selner_ ,’ which is the multiple of ‘ _seln_ ,’ which means word. The suffix ‘ _iln_ ’ denotes the past tense, and the suffix ‘ _er_ ’ denotes a plural.”

“Is that all it is?” he asks, laughing. “It’s that simple?”

“Most words in _Reisuseln_ are,” I reply. “Most conjugations are. It’s quite easy, to be honest. We try to keep everything as concise as possible, as I’ve mentioned. We mash words together in order to be precise, and we never use two words when one will do. Part of that has to do with the fact that we use magic and you need to be very specific with magic, but another part is because we dislike ambiguity. If a word in English can mean multiple things, we have multiple words for it. There’s no such thing as a synonym in _Reisuseln_ , either. If we’ve already got a word for it, we don’t need another one unless we’re combining words together to be more specific.”

“Interesting.” Ethan looks at me with rapt attention. “That’s… efficient.”

A surge of pride wells up in my chest. “ _Reisuseln_ is a language dedicated to efficiency,” I reply. “We say exactly what we mean to say and only what we mean to say, because there’s no room for ambiguity in our phrasing. That’s not to say it’s impossible to lie, but you need to know exactly what you intend to lie about if you’re going to do it.”

“So you can’t be vague?” he asks, and I nod.

“You can be cryptic, but that’s about as close as we get. And before you ask, yes, people being cryptic in _Reisuseln_ is just as irritating, if not more, than in English, because they’re definitely doing it on purpose if it’s in _Reisuseln._ ”

Ethan nods, writing this down. “So… can I have some examples of phrases?”

“Of course. Now, English has many words for ‘good,’ that is to say in the manner of ‘better than normal.’ Reisuseln has one, ‘ _liesen_.’ English has several ways of saying ‘okay,’ like ‘alright,’ ‘fine,’ ‘satisfactory,’ ‘adequate,’ ‘reasonable,’ I could go on. Reisuseln, again, only has one, and this one you’ve heard—‘ _renn_ ,’ which roughly translates to ‘acceptable.’ Instead of the many manners of comforting others and tumbling over your own words—‘it’s going to be alright,’ ‘you’ll be fine,’ ‘it’s okay,’ we have a single phrase: ‘the situation is acceptable,’ _arilin renn_. Does that make sense?”

He nods quickly as he writes these down, then looks strangely at the paper. “What does _arilin_ mean?”

“That’s our word for ‘the situation’ or ‘the circumstances.’ A direct translation would probably be closer to ‘this particular situation.’”

Scratching his head, he looks back at me. “Where’s the ‘is?’”

I laugh a little, then sit down and shake my head. “I’m sorry I forgot to mention it! _Reisuseln_ has an implied ‘is’ for temporary adjectives and verbs, since they’re always directly adjacent to their subject or object. The adjective, unless it’s showing who something belongs to, always goes after the object. Nouns usually go before other things in sentences in _Reisuseln_ because they’re more important to us. We care more that there’s a bug than we do that the bug is yellow. Does that make sense?”

“I feel like this level of pragmatism is almost pushing it,” Ethan responds. “You said temporary adjectives and verbs, like someone is doing something right at that moment. What about permanent ones? Like, a personality trait rather than a current behavior?”

“When something is permanent, we add the word ‘ _chal_ ’ before it,” I reply. “It means ‘to exist in a state of,’ more or less. It always precedes its noun, because it’s very important to know that it’s not temporary before you hear whatever it is that’s being said.” Ethan nods again, continuing to write with his ballpoint pen. His script is long and flowing in a way that I’d never seen before. Then again, I had never seen Loki write, so I didn’t know whether it was elegant or just ‘chicken scratch,’ as they call it.

“Okay,” he says. “Now, about magic. It’s just a brief question. You said a while back that all of _Reisuseln_ is musical, basically. You also said that the _Soralm_ is alive. Does this go for… other things, as well?”

I nod. “Of course. Everything in _Reisuseln,_ absolutely everything, is a song, is magical, and as such is alive. The word that resonates within you—your _reisuseln,_ the word from which we get the name of the language—is a part of that. We, because we are made up of only one word, are less ‘magical’ than spells, but like spells, we serve one main purpose. A spell’s is usually unclear, but ours is clear as day—our purpose is our _reisuseln._ I was intended to be the Trickster. I have several _reisuselner_ now, which complicates things a bit, but in the end it’s all alright. But in order for you to cast a spell, your own _reisuseln_ must resonate with it. If they do not, you quite simply cannot cast the spell.”

“How do you know it resonates?”

“It’s a sort of feeling inside you,” I reply. “A sort of pleasant little fuzzy feeling inside of you, and a slight ‘ping,’ like a bell, the first time you come into contact with it. When you use it properly for the first time, it resonates in your bones and becomes a part of you. I’m the only one the _Soralm_ resonates with, hence why no one else ever uses it except Lucas who had a very specific permission for it and has since lost it. At least, I don’t think it resonates with anyone else. No one else has ever tried. Then again, no one else that would’ve heard it speaks _Reisuseln.”_

“Except me, now,” Ethan adds, and I shrug.

“Well, you don’t quite yet, but soon, certainly.” He smiles and turns back to the page.

“What if I resonated with the _Soralm_?” he asks. “What if I just didn’t know the feeling?”

I stare at him. “I don’t know,” I respond. “I would think it wouldn’t work on you if it resonated.”

He shakes his head. “Can’t you still be affected by spells that resonate with you? I mean, sure, the _Soralm_ doesn’t work on you because it’s loyal to you. The _Soralm_ hardly knows me. It might only know that it kind of likes me, but is sworn to obey you at all times. What if that’s the case? Couldn’t it feasibly then resonate with me and make me immune to it and give me the power to use it?”

I ruminate briefly on this. “Yes. Is that what you want?” He laughs, shaking his head.

“No! No, no. I like what the _Soralm_ does for me too much to enjoy that. But it was just a thought, and it’s something I thought would be worth considering, just in case. Lucas might be able to handle it.” It’s my turn to laugh, now.

“Lucas cannot handle the _Soralm_ ,” I tell him. “He has tried, and he has failed multiple times. I don’t think you’d be able to do it for that same reason.”

Ethan shrugs. “Maybe. I wish I knew which spells I was attuned to from the start, you know?” I nod, smiling.

“Me too. It would have made things a lot easier for me in the long run.”

He looks at his paper, then back up at me. “When are we going to learn spells? I want to see what I resonate with.”

I laugh, patting him on the shoulder. “There are many spells that resonate with nearly everyone because they are simple and small. It is only the complex and long ones that often specialize—in fact, the only one I am able to utilize is the _Soralm._ All others elude me. At any rate, I do not know. It will be some time soon, I promise you.” He grins.

“I’m sorry if I’m being repetitive. I just can’t wait, you know?”

“Of course,” I tell him. “I’ve just discovered that Isaac knows many of these things about _Reisuseln_ as well, and he had shown an interest in some spellcraft, so I might teach the two of you at the same time. Lucas, of course, is already advanced in his own sort of magic, so he doesn’t need my help, but I thought it would be good for you two to learn a few things.”

“What sorts of things?” he asks, incredibly eager.

“Well, some basic things—attacks, shields, that sort of thing. I won’t be as good at defensive things—I never learned most of them, since the Council wasn’t really very big on the whole magic side of things. In fact, I only found these things out after I discovered the _Soralm_ and had some conversations with it. Not to mention I’ve yet to find a single defensive spell, ward, shield, or any of the like that actually resonates with me.”

Ethan looks terrified and shocked. “You can’t defend yourself?”

I shrug. “Not with magic, no, not physically. I have many mental attacks that function as defenses, though. The _Soralm_ is a great enough defense for me. All I need to do is sing and my enemies no longer wish to fight me.” Chuckling, I stand back up. “I’m not sure I can teach you much more about the language itself today. I’m getting a bit distracted, and you seem far more interested in other matters.” Ethan looks at me hopefully, and I say, “Yes, I’m about to go get Isaac. We’ll see what we can do.”

I feel better about myself when I teach Ethan these things. I feel better about what I’m doing and I feel more secure in myself. I can’t imagine either the Ruler or the Trickster doing much of this, after all. The Ruler is too twitchy, too nervous to share his knowledge with anyone who may possibly betray him, and the Trickster would not have the patience or the attention span—even I struggle in that area with my tangents. I have other failings, but I am more level-headed and more secure than they are, and this allows me to pass on my knowledge to others. I suppose I am both creator and teacher in ways, but creating knowledge is never a bad thing in my eyes.

I go down the stairs and look about the living room. Isaac is sitting in an armchair that is slightly too large for him, reading a book as he balls himself up on the seat. He must have heard me descending, as he turns his head from his reading to face me with a grin. “Is it time?” he asks, snatching his bookmark from the coffee table. I nod, and he stuffs the bookmark between the pages and leaves the book on the table, jumping to his feet and walking over to the stairs with a spring in his step. “I’m so excited. I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for so very long, friend. I’m not very good at anything but manipulating others, you see, and while I am alright with that being one of my primary purposes, I would really very much like to branch out a bit more.” I nod again, not saying anything, but allowing my silence to speak volumes for me. I beckon up the stairs, starting to ascend myself, and he follows me like an excited puppy.

Once the two are together in my bedroom, I smile at them. “I think it’s time to stop living in isolation,” I tell them. “I’d like to teach you these things in somewhere a bit more spacious, maybe with a little more accessible knowledge. I believe the both of you will like it quite a lot. Ethan, you may very well recall it all on your own. We lived there for a time after the Ruler had just gained power, when he was going through his vast opulent phase. I rather like the concept, but it didn’t really suit my taste until very recently. I’ve grown a burning dislike of this place since I discovered what happened here.” I shrug. “Are you two up for that?” The two nod, not quite in unison, but eagerly enough for me to take them both by the hand and transport them to the library I’ve envisioned.

It’s warm. The lighting is dim. We’re surrounded by bookshelves taller than all three of us stacked one on top of the other, and we’re sitting in a small indentation in the stone floors, a cushioned area where one can sit and just read in the peaceful area for a while. It’s also suitable for sleeping on, if one were so inclined, but most are not. Perhaps Ethan would be a good librarian, I think to myself. That could be his official task when I am not awake, keeping knowledge in order. I think he would do a good job of that if it’s the decision that I make. I don’t mention it now, though. It’s not the right time. Not yet.

Isaac looks about with a smile, but Ethan seems enraptured. He scurries over to a shelf, not quite seeming to understand where he is or what’s just happened, but not giving a single care to the answer to either. There are so many more questions he wants to see answered. I chuckle to myself, and beckon for him to come back. “We’re about to begin, Ethan.” He looks back with a delighted face, then sits down again, looking at me how he had at the books, as though in a trance brought on by the written word. I clear my throat, then begin my lesson.

“Though it’s not usually as evident as one would expect, _Reisuseln_ is incredibly predisposed toward magical purposes. Every song can be used for spellcasting purposes, and there are feasibly an infinite number of songs depending on the combination of the words used.” I look between them, smiling. “Now, you shouldn’t just go combining words carelessly—I’ve found out the hard way that it can lead to some major setbacks, and anyone without immortality would probably not be well-off. But I can teach you a few basic things, as I’ve previously stated, just to get a taste of what’s to come.”

When I begin to sing, their eager expressions await me.

 

I’m staring at the ceiling. I can’t sleep. My decision keeps me up, even though I’ve decided not to decide on it until I absolutely have to. My room is far nicer here, more comfortable, and Ethan seems to like it greatly. Isaac has moved in with Lucas, and Ethan thought it best to just room with me, since it was the most obvious solution. Robin has her own room, as does Violet—though it is cold, undecorated, and always empty. There are also two for the Trickster and the Ruler, should they ever find themselves manifesting. I’d rather they not infringe on my personal space. At any rate, Ethan is on my chest, listening to my heartbeat, letting it soothe him to sleep. He has heard a great many songs today, and hums some of them under his breath to commit them to memory. I’d sing some of them back to him again, but they would just keep him up with the smell of fire and the sound of crackling air around him. He doesn’t need that. He doesn’t deserve to be kept up. I do.

I hate my insomnia, but I can never say that I did not have it coming. The _Soralm_ will not affect me, and I don’t know what else I would do if I were to attempt to sleep. My mind races every time I try to find rest, so I just stare at the ceiling instead. It’s calming, in a sense, and though I never quite find sleep, sometimes I am able to turn off my thoughts and just sit in a quiet, blank peace, my eyes focused, my mind drifting somewhere entirely different. These are some of my favorite times, the times when I stop thinking, because it allows me to rest without sleeping. My body is still exhausted, though, and this is problematic, but it’s not as though I’m doing much other than teaching anyway. It can be brushed off and ignored easily enough. I wish I could explain this curious blankness to others so they could attempt to replicate it, try to find a spell that would induce it, but I am almost too tired to do so. Almost.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I allow Ethan to rest his head upon the pillow, thinking it is my chest, and go to my study to find a spell that will induce this state. I have found nothing so far, and consulting the _Soralm_ has done me no good, though it deals with sleep and the mind. Perhaps it has a similar tune, I think, but that does not help me if I cannot find the words. Not tonight, though. Tonight, I am content to sit and enjoy what I do have, though sleep eludes me and even the sweet darkness of the mind does not grant me its grace.

I have received a plethora of people as additions to my posse, so to speak. We are all bonded together rather tightly, in ways that I can scarcely explain. It fills my heart with joy to see that even after I released them, Lucas and Ethan remain loyal to me, perhaps even more so than before. Isaac requests specifically not to be released, and I will comply with that—if he truly does enjoy it more in control. I’ve considered letting him go just to see what he says when he’s out of it, but I believe it would be a similar answer. This is why I have not yet done what I have thought appropriate for all those who follow me. Robin is not resisting the control anymore, which worries me deeply, but I suppose it is because Violet is separate from her. I think she would be happiest married to the Ruler if she no longer wishes to fight it, if it makes her feel better to be like this. This extended ‘family’ of sorts has actually made me quite fond of all those involved, since I have never truly had a family before unless one counts the Council.

It took me some time to realize it, but I had deeply missed this home, despite my earlier inclination to move. I would prefer something a bit more quaint, certainly, as this is over-the-top in its opulence, but there was still a great ache in my heart that has seemed to resolve itself after returning here. I am safer than I ever remember being, or at least it feels that way. I am surrounded by those that care about me, those whom I care about. Yes, I killed Robin, but I do not need to dwell upon it. I have done worse things. I will try to make things better for everyone to do penitence. I will do my best to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and the greatest good for her memory given life as well. This applies to both Robin and Violet equally. Everyone wants radically different things, and I will do my best to meet in the middle.

I stare at the ceiling intently, as though the patterns in it were runes that I could read. I could divine the future with Hirese’s sight, but I would rather surprise myself. I do not want to know what fate has in store for me. Perhaps it would make my life easier, but easier is not what I need right now. I need to do what is right, and I need to have no influence upon my decision when I do so. I feel better now, and I think that will help me to make my decision. My emotional state is recuperating. While I am physically weak for now, I strongly believe that once I am capable of resting my mind consistently, I will be fully able to do as I plan, enacting whichever line of action I decide upon and allowing my conviction to remain unshaken. I so love it when I’m able to be unshaken, when my conviction is strong. It feels like it has been a very long time since I have had any conviction, any drive. I hope that these predicted changes will alter this.

That doesn’t matter right now, though. What matters is that I have a strong support system, everyone making certain that I feel like they are there for me. It feels, for once, like things will truly be alright for once. It feels like I can fix things. Perhaps it is just my ego. Perhaps it is my increased mood from the change of space and the calming tensions in my home. I am glad that they have gained free will here. I am inclined to believe that it would be good for the humans as well for that reason, but at the same time, I am not sure that the mortals are ready for it yet. I would like to have more time to experiment, but I feel the ultimatum drift closer every day. I do not know how long it has been since Violet paid me her visit, but I do know that if she never pays me another, absolutely nothing in this empire will get done. I will continue to teach Ethan and Isaac magic, Lucas will continue to control the media, Robin will likely give speeches, and all will remain exactly as it was before. I hope that she does not try to stall me. I will outlast her, and I do not want this empire to stay intact for any longer than it must.

It takes me moments to recognize that even in my internal monologue, I go upon incredible tangents. My thoughts all seem to gravitate back toward my decision and the stress it inflicts upon me. If I needed to worry about blood pressure, certainly I would be dead by now. I would love to be able to talk to Violet now, but she doesn’t want to talk to me, I suppose. Maybe she’s forcing me to make a decision before she shows. I don’t know. She never told me the process. I let it go for now. It’s not important. What is important is those around me.

I need to take care of them and make sure nothing bad happens to them. I need to protect them from harm, should Violet or my other two facets attempt to harm them. I need to teach them what I know and inquire about what I don’t. I need to make sure I keep my mind nimble so that I can keep them under my wing, and if they meet an end, I need to take it upon myself to resurrect them, no matter the cost to me personally. I keep their minds preserved in my own just in case such an event were to take place.

Ethan shifts, wrapping his arms tighter around me, and I know that he understands me. I am glad that I chose him, that Violet gave me this advice. I am glad that he’s here, that he has the ability to keep me saner than I would otherwise be. I am glad that he can embrace me without fear of what I will do to him, because sometimes I fear what I may do myself. I am glad that he is here, because now this manor does not feel alien.

When they are all here, by my side, this place feels like home.


	10. And I won't run away, 'cause I'm already home

One night, my research pays off, and I almost wonder if I could make a bargain with Violet to take this option instead.

The spell I discover does not resonate quite right with me—I could cast it, certainly, but it would not go as well as it would for Isaac, who seems to have a natural aptitude for charms. It makes sense, given his genesis, but I had still somehow not quite expected him to be so good at them. He visits us just before going to bed every night, sending me into this state and allowing my mind to rest the entire night to some degree. It is not quite a full rest, as my body is still active and rigid and aches terribly every time I awaken from this state, but it is better than nothing.

Tonight, Isaac approaches me again, as per the usual, when this idea strikes me. “ _Jiailir, sertan hes rill,_ ” Isaac begins to sing, and I feel a warm rush up my body as I speak, letting my mind clear.

“What if you just left me like this?” I ask, and he stops abruptly. “If this was your agreement with Violet. That you would just… leave me half-aware of everything around me, in a state of utter bliss, not allowing me to think?”

Isaac shakes his head. “You’re very impressionable in that state. Friend, anyone could tell you anything and you’d probably do it, and… well. That’s an awful state to have anyone with any sort of power in, don’t you think? The Trickster would love it—it’s very much like him—but you’d also never allow your body to recuperate. This helps your mind to recover because you can’t sleep for whatever reason, but you do actually need to let your body rest, friend. You won’t ever get any better physically if you don’t. You’ll get very exhausted, and you couldn’t… couldn’t use your powers.” He looks very concerned about me. “How long has it been since you’ve truly slept?”

I make a disdainful noise. “Only a few days, I think. I mean, this is normal by this point. I go about three or four days without sleeping, then while I’m blanked out, it comes to me for a while. My powers recuperate enough in that time period for me to continue using them. It’s alright. I’m not concerned about it.” I shrug, then he seems to have an idea.

“Tasedio,” he says, and my attention narrows, changes to focus only upon Isaac and his words. I wonder, momentarily, as the pause allows my thoughts to ebb back in, if this has such an effect on me because I too am a song, because I am a one-word tune that can be manipulated by request if you only speak my name. The thought is gone soon, though, as he gives me a command. “Please go to sleep, friend.”

My mind goes dark, sweet and unexpected and everything I had hoped it would be.

 

When I wake again, I find that I do not like it when Isaac sends me to sleep. I was plagued with terrible nightmares all night, ones of the Ruler escaping and of Isaac’s terrible alternate self. I cannot allow him to do this again, no matter the cost, and I tell him that I will not allow it. He is saddened, and suggests that he continue to use our alternate solution instead. It seems to still work perfectly well, so I agree wholeheartedly. I allow him to do this night after night, teaching them in the day, and soon he gets very good at it. I come very close to sleep many times, but it eludes me more often than not. I still get to sleep frequently, though, at least comparatively speaking. I hear Ethan whispering to me on occasion when my mind is floating somewhere completely different, and I don’t know what he’s saying but I feel like it’s helpful and I should do anything he asks of me. I never get up or leave my bed, but it still intrigues me every morning. I never end up asking, but it always interests me just enough to get frustrated in myself for not doing so.

Lucas is doing better than usual, as I find out later that day. He seems to have more to report on than ever, more to go through, but he takes it all in stride and does his job with a certain finesse I’d never noticed before. I suppose Ethan’s preference toward print rather than technology may have been hampering him before, or something. I’m not really sure. I don’t go into Lucas’s mind, just as I tried not to go into Loki’s except when necessary. One never knows what they will find in the head of an ancient god of mischief, after all. He could probably trap me in there somehow and never release me again. I don’t think he needs my mind intact, only my body, so I am a little wary of him, especially since he allies with the Trickster. On the same note, however, he allies with the Trickster, and that makes me believe that he would likely not harm me.

The Ruler and the Trickster have claimed their rooms. They are not often in, but when they are, they squabble frequently. My room is between theirs, and it is good that I can still hear footfalls in my nightly dazed state, for otherwise I would find it very difficult to stop the Trickster before he is able to turn the Ruler’s entire room upside down in the middle of the night. On a similar line of thinking, I have also tried my hardest to ward Lucas’s mind from the Ruler’s control, though they seem to spend a significant amount of time together. I do not want a repeat of what happened a long while ago, with Loki being reshaped and not knowing quite who he is or what he is to do. It wouldn’t be quite Loki, sure, but it would be close enough to make me worry.

Speaking of things that make me worry, Isaac and the Trickster seem to have struck up an agreement. As Violet is still missing, Isaac also casts his spell frequently upon the Trickster, who enjoys the feeling of being a mindless beast at someone else’s beck and call—difficult as it is to restrain his mind even for him, I can understand why he would appreciate the effort being put upon someone else, especially since I too have endured it. I am glad that the Ruler has not turned him into his own personal lap dog, but I am not certain that he is able to. I’ve tried my hardest to prevent it, after all, and that itself may be doing a fairly good job of keeping the two from harming one another. I do not know. I am unaware of a great deal of my own capabilities, even now in these near end-times. The sun is setting on my empire, and I’m ready to let it go, one way or another. I only wish that Violet would hurry so that I can enact something, so that something can happen. I need a change. We all need a change, whether we want it or not.

It’s this line of thinking that keeps me up when I should be thoughtless. It invades, on rare occasions, and usually Ethan feels my unusual stirring—I do not move when in that state, and I cannot help but do so when awake—and he tends toward putting me back down into it. It resonates with him to some degree as well. I am surprised how well it works with everyone, to be frank. I was not expecting it to resonate so well with so many, especially when it eludes me—I am good at most charms, but there is something about this one that just does not sit quite right with me. Perhaps it is the imperfect control, and the Ruler rebels against it. Perhaps it is because I need it, and if it resonated too well with me, it would not work. That is how the _Soralm_ seems to function, after all, so this one may be no different. Thoughts plague my being, and though I try to purge them, I am not even close to successful.

I nudge Ethan, and I try to close my eyes, but I cannot stop staring at the ceiling. My eyes are dry and pained. I can’t sleep. I can’t close my eyes. I can’t let myself drift or else I’ll never wake and—

My panicked thought process is interrupted when Ethan places his hand upon my arm and makes eye contact with me. “Thomas,” he whispers, “are you alright?” I shake my head frantically, knowing that something is going wrong in my head and I don’t know what or why. I can close my eyes now, and I do, savoring the feeling of moisture upon them even as it runs out of the corners of my eyes. He presses his lips to my forehead, and whispers something I don’t quite hear. Then he sings this new spell to me, and I find peace again. My mind blanks out, his mouth still making motions upon my skull, and my entire body is overcome with waves of soothing pleasure. He is trying to make sure that I don’t get thoughts again tonight, something tells me inside the back of my head. I’m nodding and I don’t know why, letting myself curl up against him and allowing myself to drift as per the usual. Everything is calm.

 

I haven’t slept for a week when she finds me.

I am overdue by three days and it is taking its toll on my flesh. My powers have not returned for some time. There are deep bags under my eyes and my mind is no longer getting any benefit from the spell. I feel as though I am dying, but whenever I try to sleep, I end up lying awake instead. I have never been able to simply collapse in my exhaustion, and I had previously forbidden using my name to put me to sleep. Now that I cannot un-command them, so to speak, I am out of options and do not know what to do. It is coincidental at best, then, that Violet chooses this moment to speak with me.

Ethan is out tonight for whatever reason, probably trying to find a cure for my condition. I do not recall anymore. It is deep in the middle of the night, blacker than I could have ever imagined and it wraps around me and chokes me like a noose. It is in this moment of feeling as though I am suffocating in the darkness that she appears at the foot of my bed again. I can only detect her presence because of the sound she makes when she enters. She snaps her fingers, and my bedside lamp sends spears of illumination straight into my eyes. They feel as though they’ve been stabbed, and I roll over, screaming, and cover my head to try to ward off my sudden headache. Her giggling fills my ears and becomes all I can hear. All I can see, even with closed eyes and my face down, is the light. It scalds me to the core.

After a time, which was likely no more than a few minutes, I am able to open my eyes and roll over to face her. Her deep purple eyes shine almost lavender in the light, and her hair blends in with the background, as though she is no more than a shadow that would retreat if I were to turn on the overhead light. That would, of course, be nearly suicidal for me, given how much pain I was in with only a small bulb being turned on without my prior knowledge, but it is worth thinking about.

“Good to see you,” she says, and her grin is wide and feral just as I remember. “Have you made a decision yet?”

I laugh a little. “No,” I tell her. “I was hoping I could make one now.”

She laughs too, cackling like I’ve never heard before. “That’s very Trickster-esque of you. I’m proud.”

“I didn’t do it to make you proud,” I tell her. “And I’m not the Trickster.”

“No, of course not,” she says, falling back onto the bed. “You’re the Creator, or soon to be. So what would the Creator choose? The opportunity to create? Or the opportunity to protect his creations? Which do you value more?”

I shake my head, falling silent.

“You don’t know. You really are indecisive, aren’t you?” She doesn’t look amused anymore. “Couldn’t make a decision to save the lives of millions. I’m surprised you lasted this long as a ruler, frankly. I bet it’s because you spend all your time thinking about it. You think too hard about it, so you freeze yourself up and you can’t make the choice because of all of what you’ll lose. Don’t think. Act. You need to choose and I haven’t got all night. I realize you’re tired. I realize you’re upset. Do you want me to make it easier for you?”

“How would you go about doing that?” I ask, and instantly regret my question. She starts to say something that I know she shouldn’t know, but somehow does, and— and— 

“ _Jiailir,”_ it starts, but that’s all I can make out before my mind goes blank and I stare at her vacantly. “Good,” she tells me. “Now you can’t think, can you?” I shake my head slowly, blinking at her. “I’d like for you to make that decision. Just in your head. I want you to know what you want. You don’t need to tell me yet, but hang onto that decision, okay?” I nod, and my mind provides an answer. I keep it private, as instructed, and she sits up.

“I want you to tell me that decision later,” she tells me. “I want to talk for a little while, though. About what you plan to do.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, and she chuckles.

“Before your choice. Before everything changes. Surely you want to do something.”

I nod, a thought springing to my mind. “Yes. I do.”

“What is that thing?” she asks me, gazing at me intently.

“I want to spend some time with the humans.”

She gives me a strange look, as though I replied in a way she wasn’t expecting. “You want to spend time with them? You realize that their small, fleeting lives will not retain the knowledge of you for long.”

“I know,” I tell her, “but I will.”

“Why do you need this?” she asks, and she looks so confused that it would have been humorous if I could think long enough to laugh.

“I need to remember them as they are, as the amazing creatures they are. Peaceful. Helpful. Considerate.”

“Brainwashed,” Violet adds. I nod.

“Yes,” I say. “I am as well, if only a little. By you, nonetheless, in at least one sense.”

She sounds shocked. “What?”

I shrug. “You changed me. You used my name to make it so that I didn’t want to go into your mind anymore, reconditioned and reinforced my name until it was second nature to fall into line. The Trickster is even worse off. Atusiel planted a seed of subservience in him, that enjoyment of losing control. He was conditioned for quite a while to feel that way. The Ruler brainwashed himself into believing this was what was necessary, into believing this was what he wanted, and he brought Loki with him. We’re all a little controlled, I think. I reshaped the humans. I’ve reshaped myself. I’ve done it to everyone here. I’ve been controlled at least once by everyone except the Trickster—technically speaking, the Ruler even got me once for a very short amount of time.”

She laughs. “Everyone? You’re serious.” I nod, my expression somber. My mind is still clear, at least for the most part. I feel a slight vibration in my skull, and there are two people next to me. They aren’t moving either. Perhaps they are also affected by this blissful emptiness as I am. Violet laughs, and she actually sounds surprised and sort of happy. “Did you do that on purpose? Or did they just… happen?”

“It just happened,” I tell her. “I don’t know who they are. I can’t see them.”

She laughs harder. “Turn your head, then!” I do, briefly. The Ruler is on my right, the Trickster on my left. I look back at Violet, and she is chuckling and shaking her head. “I can’t believe you. I can’t believe that your mind does this sort of thing spontaneously.”

“I’m Tasedio,” the Trickster responds. “This is normal.”

“Why, though?” she asks. “Why on earth would it deem this an appropriate moment to release you two?”

“Further clearing of the mind,” the Ruler states. “So that it can sort things out, it ejected us into our own entities.”

She rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe this. I was having a conversation with the Creator about the fate of the empire, and then you all show up. What am I supposed to do now?”

“Ignore us,” the Ruler replies. “Allow us to drift. We do not need to have input. We just need to be out of the mind. Especially since the Creator had spoken of going to see people. He did not want us going with, putting them in danger.”

“Fair enough,” she replies, and takes me by the hand. “Come on. I’m taking you to see your people one last time. But first… a simple question for the both of you two.” She looks between the Ruler and the Trickster. “What do you want? I know your conflicting desires burn inside you with a passion, but what do you two truly want that you know you can never have? Out of curiosity.”

The Trickster sounds crestfallen when he speaks. “I miss having friends. I didn’t… I didn’t really mean to kill them all.”

“A child,” is the Ruler’s response, and I can hear the sadness catching in his throat. “We have a family of sorts now, but… I want a daughter.”

Violet nods. “Good to know.” She does not intend to give either of them what they want, at least not at this time. What I want is to make sure that the humans are safe and secure. That is what she is giving to me. With my hand in hers, we vanish from the room and I find myself reorienting to a new place. She dismisses the spell, and I stand to find myself in a small shack in the middle of nowhere. A mother of two with her children sleeping in her arms comes out of the next room—there are probably only two or three—and greets me. I nod at her, in slight envy, but also intensely proud.

I know her consciousness. I have heard her praise many times before. Her life has not been easy or prosperous, but she was strong enough to manage anyway. When her husband died a few years ago, she mourned and spoke to me for at least a month. I thought I had forgotten her until I saw her, and there was no way I could fail to remember her. She tells me she’s grateful that I’ve come, that she’s missed talking to me but I’ve been giving reports of being so busy and she wasn’t sure what to do.

I take a moment to embrace her, avoiding her children with my arms in case I would accidentally harm them or wake them, and hug her tightly enough to lift her from the ground, just a bit. I seem to have forgotten I don’t have Roanah’s strength right now. “I’m sorry I haven’t been responding lately,” I tell her. “I’ve just… there’s so much going on… I can’t continue to do this. I’m so tired.” As if to emphasize my point, my strength gives out, and I lower her to the ground as gently as I can.

“You look tired,” she says, studying my face. “Like you’ve been up for days.”

“I have,” I reply as I shrug. “I’m not too worried about it. Worse things have happened to me.”

She gives me a skeptical look. “You could keel over any minute. I don’t think things have really been all that much worse.”

Laughing, I tell her, “You’d be surprised. At any rate, I wanted to… to visit you.” I glance back at Violet. Her expression is blank, neutral. “Because something’s about to happen. And there isn’t going to be a broadcast for it.”

The woman—Alienne, I recall—looks at me with fear and confusion. “Why? What’s going to happen?”

“A huge change to the system,” I tell her, and put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. When it comes, it comes.” She’s shaking slightly under my touch, and I pat her gently, trying to soothe her. “It’ll be okay. I promise it’ll all be okay.”

Violet clears her throat. I look back at her, and she is borderline livid. I take my hand off Alienne’s shoulder and step back. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to be going now. There are a few others that I need to see.” Reminding myself of Alienne instead of my problems has given me some faith in humanity back—she could have survived without me helping her—but it also makes me realize that they like having me around, that they benefit from it. Everything seems to always cause further complications on both ends of the argument, and that frustrates me. It matters not, as I have already made my decision, but it still hurts me to see how my decision will affect these people. Violet doesn’t seem pleased by my interaction, but whisks me off to the next regardless.

Or, at least, I thought that was what she was doing. “Why did you tell her it was going to be okay?” she asks me as we stand back in my bedroom. “It’s not going to be okay. She’s going to end up either heartbroken or dead.”

“She’s going to end up either temporarily heartbroken or temporarily dead,” I remind Violet. “It’ll be okay in the end for her. No matter my choice, I will be the one to suffer the most from this decision.”

“And yet the people will suffer in the meantime,” she says. “I somehow expected you to pick an option three. To find something that I would agree with.”

“I think we’re too different for that,” I tell her. “I have a better idea. Instead of telling people what’s about to come, why don’t we just sit and talk? I want to clear the air.”

She glares at me. “You’re not changing my mind.”

“And I’ve already made mine up,” I reply, smiling. “I don’t need to. I just don’t want you to hate me when I do make my decision. I want you to know why I do what I do.”

“Fine,” she says. “Why do you do what you do? Why did you rule the world all this time when it wasn’t your domain? Why did you try to fix everything when you knew you couldn’t possibly do it in the way that you needed to? Why did you keep trying when you knew that all hope was lost?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I never believe that all hope is lost. I knew there had to be a change, that I had to change how I ruled in some manner. I was just trying to figure out what it was. I was unsuccessful until you spoke with me, and even then it was difficult for me to decide what would be best for the people. I always knew what I would choose, right from the start, but I wanted to put off committing to it until the very end.”

“Why?” she asks, giving me a look.

“I wanted to see if there was another way,” I reply. “There wasn’t.” I think for a little while, then ask, “How did the humans—the ones you commanded—how did they resist me? Was it all just an illusion?”

She laughs and shakes her head. “No. A good fifteen years ago, you had a similar loss of faith in yourself, as you’ll recall. You reached out with your power as the Trickster, and you altered several unborn babies mentally without recognizing it. This caused several children worldwide to become immune to your mental powers. You put blocks in them yourself, and now it can pass genetically. I’ve been accelerating it, making sure that it keeps happening. It’s more a mutation than anything. But now humans all carry the potential to have a child of this sort. It’ll give me a lot more leeway when I want to have others help me.”

“And what do you plan on doing with these children?” I ask.

“Well, it depends on what your decision is, I guess.” She grins a little. “They’ll help me keep you asleep if you choose to sleep, and they’ll help me destroy the empire if you choose to let it burn. They’ll be the enforcers of your choice.”

“So you’re using them,” I state, and she shrugs.

“They’re allowed their choice. I’m not going to force them, but they can see how the world truly is. Do you think they’re going to give up the opportunity to change things if they can? They’re rebellious teenagers, Tom. They love being able to do something about a situation they feel is unjust.” She laughs, shaking her head. “They’re practically the opposite of you. If they think something is wrong, they have an absolute fit until it’s changed or they forget about the cause.”

“I was never a teenager,” I tell her. “I came into this world as an adult.”

“How strange it must be to watch development, then,” she replies. “To view birth and growth and death and know that you are static for all eternity. You do not grow and you do not age. You have no parents and no children and no siblings but the ones you create in your mind. You are, ultimately, alone in the universe.”

“I’m aware,” I reply. “I’m very aware.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” she asks, and I nod, biting my lip. “Good. Just making sure you stay in touch with the humanity that you do have. Or, at least, as close as you get to it. You’ve got feelings and you should never forget that.”

“It’s pretty hard to forget you have feelings when you never really feel anything else,” I tell her. “That didn’t make a ton of sense, I’m aware, but I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to feel. I can’t imagine how I’d act without emotion.”

“Like Atusiel,” she replies, and out of the corner of my eye I register that the Ruler shivers at the name. I shake my head.

“No, Atusiel had emotion. He had ambition and anger, at the very least. He knew powerlessness in his final moments. They all knew emotion in their final moments, save for Roanah. If he could have had an emotion while asleep, it would have been confidence.”

“And you?” she asks, and I shrug.

“I was born in longing. I presume that if I die, I will die in it as well. That is my primary emotion, it seems. Always longing for something more, something else. I’ve been handed the world on a platter and I still want more. Well, I want less, but I always want something different.”

“Is that something that all three of you can agree on?” she asks the other two, and they nod slowly. “Good. At least there’s something you all have in common.” She pauses for a moment, then looks at the Ruler. “Sit up.” He does, swaying a little as he remains upright. His head lolls back slightly, likely from the weight on his hyper-relaxed neck, which makes him look like he’s exposing his throat to her. “What are you going to do when this is all over?”

“I’d like to stay outside the body,” he says, “but I don’t need to if it’s impossible.”

“I’d like for you not to,” she replies, glaring at him. “You stay in the body and you don’t make a fuss. Ever.” She looks at the Trickster and says, “Same goes for you.”

The Trickster smiles. “Of course,” he says. “Anything for you, dear.”

She looks between the two, looks at me, then mouths, ‘They’re faking.’ The Trickster turns his head slightly, toward me, and winks. Then he’s on top of the Ruler, biting and clawing and he almost looks more beast than human now. The Ruler is screaming in pain, and I can feel the burn throughout my body as well. He starts ordering the Trickster to cease, but I do not think either of them comprehends how this seems to work. The Trickster cannot be controlled by the Ruler alone. The Ruler cannot be harmed physically by the Trickster alone. It hurts, but it does not last. Neither can win, and if they do not realize this, I fear they may fight in my head and in the flesh until the end of days.

“ _Stop it_!” I shout, my voice commanding their attention. Both stop and look at me, and I can feel the tension coursing through their bodies, through their blood, tingling and trying to escape. “You should both stop.”

“He attacked me,” the Ruler says. “I’m just defending myself.”

“ _Sert idriiantariln Robinan hes,”_ is the growled reply. ‘You murdered Robin’s mind.’ Both are technically true, but I know that there’s more to it than what they’ll say.

“You’re attacking one another because you hate each other,” I say, shaking my head. “Because we’re all the same person and we all hate who we are, so you’re taking it out on the other that best represents what you despise. But we’re all so painfully similar. Introspective. Focused on helping and supporting others. Filled with self-loathing and longing. We all care deeply about those close to us and end up hurting them in the process. We’re more alike than you are different. We’re all Tasedio.”

“And that makes his actions acceptable?” the Ruler asks, looking at the Trickster.

“No,” I reply. “It doesn’t make either of your actions acceptable. It does mean that you have to live with them. That you have to find some way to coexist.”

“And if we don’t?” This time it’s the Trickster, giving me a look of disgust.

I give the two of them the best serious look I can muster. “Then I will end both of you and absorb you into myself as we did with the Council. I am not afraid to assimilate your personalities and views into my own if I deem it necessary. Do you like being separate entities?” They nod in silence, almost clinging to each other now. “Then I would suggest you learn how to get along. You two are completely different, yes, but in a way that can compliment one another. Find ways that you do. But if you do fight, do it up here.” I point at my temple, and as they continue to cling to each other, they are gone.

“Well, that was an escapade,” Violet says, shaking her head. “Damn Trickster. Love the man, but sometimes he’s… you know.”

“That I do.” I smile. “They’re more codependent than they believe. I wish I could make them see that as clearly as everyone else does.”

“Indeed.” Violet sighs and sits down on the floor. I take a seat as well. “So. What now, o Creator?”

“Now?” I ask. “Now I tell you what choice I’ve made. I labored over it a lot, but I always knew in my heart which one I had to choose. I don’t think I could bear to do the other one simply because of my nature. I have tried so hard not to be selfish, not to take everything for myself. I give as much as I can and I make sure that I help people whenever necessary, but somehow I still end up hurting everyone around me. I don’t know why or how this happens, but I do know that I hate it with a passion and wish that I could stop it. So I am going to try to be as good of a ruler as I can be, when it’s necessary, without becoming the Ruler. Does that make sense?”

“I suppose,” she says, and I can’t read her emotion. “So what are you thinking?”

“That’s a good question.” I look at the floor. “I’m thinking that I’ve put this off for too long. I wish I had felt this strongly about changing things before, so that it would not have been so dangerous to exit the system now.”

“Well, there’s nothing that can be done about it now,” she replies. “You should have thought of that before. Some omnipotent being you are.”

I chuckle. “Some omnipotent being indeed. I think it’s time to get going, though.”

“What do you plan to do?” She’s asked me this three times now, and I’ve avoided the question for long enough, I think. It’s time for me to bow out and let the curtain close. I take a deep breath, look up at her, and make sure I look twice as confident in my words as I feel. 

“My whole life I have been selfish,” I tell her as we stand up. “I will make certain that this is my last selfish act.”

I think she’s frowning. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I need to sleep.”

Her expression changes from one of shock to deep curiosity. “Why is that selfish? You’re saving billions of lives.”

“Because they may need me to help them,” I tell her, “but I need sleep a great deal. I thought it was my burden to bear to help the humans so that they could fix things in order to atone for what I’d done to the Council, and this is taking the metaphorical easy way out. But I’m making a mess of their society, so I think it would be best if I got as close to death as I possibly can, maybe forever. Every life has an ending. I thought I was exempt from that, but I suppose this is mine.”

She smiles, shakes her head, and tips my head up so she can make eye contact with me. When she touches me, we’re transported to a room I don’t recognize. It still feels like we’re inside my home, but I’ve never seen this part of the house before. I don’t have the time to ask where we are before she starts speaking. “I’ll make sure that your sacrifice is not forgotten. You need no longer be a king. It’ll be easy for me to get them out of their mindset of looking to you for constant guidance. It’ll become more occasional.”

“What?” I ask, knowing my face is screwing up in confusion. “How can they look to me for guidance if I’m asleep?”

“Because you’re not a king anymore,” she tells me. “I’ve taken the liberty of transporting you below your house in a place that no one will find you unless they’re looking. My people will watch over you, make sure that you don’t wake before it’s necessary. But you will wake again, Creator. You will live to see your people, not as a king, but as a god.” My knees go weak from exhaustion and surprise and I fall backwards onto the bed, lying down and staring up at her. I open my mouth to ask questions, to figure out what’s just happened, but she is faster than I am.

“Sleep, Tasedio.”

I close my eyes.


	11. Epilogue

I open my eyes again to silence and stone.

“What’s the date?” I ask to a room I would think empty if I did not move my gaze from its current place on the ceiling. I’ve grown accustomed to asking this when I first wake, to make sure I’m staying on a good sleeping schedule. I’m usually right on time, but once or twice I’ve been pretty far off. Sometimes my sleep cycles work far differently than they should be, and I wake up days ahead of time.

My bedside attendant—I’m not sure what they’re actually called, but they’re trained by Violet, so I trust that they can do their job—replies. I’m right on schedule. “It’s a day before the festival,” she tells me as I sit up. “You seem to have perfect timing this go-round. It’s very good to meet you, by the way.” She offers her hand, and I take it with a grin. “I’m Lily.” I chuckle a little, then reply.

“I’m Thomas,” I respond. “But you already knew that.” She giggles, then turns back to her tablet-like device. I’m not really sure what they have nowadays, but it seems like it’s a sort of device for taking notes, at least.

“You’ve got a bit of preparation to go through after the introduction in a few minutes—just some first-order bathing and eating and such—and then it’ll be about time for things to get started on the whole.”

“Has it been a long fifty years?” I ask, and she shrugs.

“I don’t know. Long enough for your last attendant to pass away halfway after the forty-mark. You weren’t really all that awake at the forty when we were observing, and I was just a girl, but we have technically met before. You were groggy enough not to process that we were even there, and you…” She bites her lip. “You told the observers some quite sad things about yourself, to be honest. And then in the middle of speaking, you fell right back asleep. Interesting, to say the least.”

I scrunch my brows as I look at her. “I’m very sorry,” I tell her. “You seem incredibly kind. I’m sorry I’ve been… depressing.” Fixing my gaze on the floor, I continue. “I probably didn’t recognize that anyone but Maury was there. We talked so often—I can’t believe he stayed as long as he did, but he must have enjoyed what he did. I woke to him on a fifty, just like with you, and then the next one imagine my surprise when it’s Maury again, just fifty years aged. He must have been, what, twenty at the first, seventy at the second, a hundred and fifteen? Oh, he was a great man. I’m going to miss him terribly.”

“You do remember us,” she says, sounding in awe. “Is it true that you remember every one of us that’s ever been in here?”

“Everyone I’ve ever been awake for,” I reply. “I wish I could’ve met the ones that I wasn’t, but that would defeat the purpose.”

Nodding, she looks back down at her note-taking device. “Yeah. It’s just… a surprise, I suppose. We all thought that—being a god—you wouldn’t have time for us, you’d just forget that we were ever around. Violet said otherwise, but we thought it was just to boost morale.” Lily shakes her head. “Do you miss everyone?”

“I got to know everyone personally,” I reply. “At least in some manner of speaking. It’ll probably be the same with you. There’s not a person I’ve met, I don’t think, that I didn’t like. Even some of the rougher ones eventually open up, and that’s a beautiful moment.” I pause, then say, “I should really open the doors.”

Lily smiles. “That would be a good idea.”

I brush my hair back with my fingers, rub the sleep from my eyes, and ascend to the main floor of my home. It’s just a turn away from the door and I flip the switch to open the shining white to crowds upon crowds of people, screaming my name, and I open my arms and take a bow.

“It’s good to be back,” I tell them, and the cheers fill my head and wash me away.


End file.
